


Chasing Tail

by tawg



Series: The Dangers of Dating a High School Principal [13]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU - civilian Phil, Angry Birds, Avenging is not a job with stable work hours, Established Relationship, M/M, Principal Coulson, Science Bros, Team Dynamics, background pepperony, level seven cockblocking, pet-sitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil and Clint have some scheduling conflicts. Clint and his teammates have some personality conflicts. Clint and Mittens II just have conflicts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint woke up to the sounds of Phil getting dressed and the smell of coffee. “It can’t be morning already,” he grumbled before wrapping an arm around Phil’s pillow and pressing his face into it.

“It was morning when you got here,” Phil replied, and Clint made an indistinct noise of complaint in return. The bed dipped beside him and Phil pressed a kiss to the back of Clint’s head. Clint rolled over and hooked an arm behind Phil’s neck. Phil was recently scrubbed freshly shaved, smelling of the expensive shaving soap he used and the shampoo that put ideas about leather and citrus into Clint’s cloudy stream of thought. Phil’s skin felt clean and his mouth tasted like coffee over toothpaste. Clint pushed himself up onto one elbow, deepening the kiss.

“Mm,” Phil hummed, pulling away with his eyes still closed. “Good morning,” he said with a smile. 

“Very good morning,” Clint agreed. 

“I have to go.”

Clint frowned. “Not such a good morning.”

Phil’s smile twitched and he pressed a kiss to Clint’s forehead. “This is what happens when you stay over on a school night,” he replied as he stood up.

Clint groaned and flopped back down on his back. “School sucks,” he grumbled, and Phil threw a pair of pants at Clint’s face in response. Closer inspection revealed them to be the sleep pants Phil had been wearing the night before. “Any chance you could do the shower and changing thing again now that I’m awake?” he asked hopefully.

Phil gave him a fond look. “Not this time.” He picked his watch up and slid it on over his hand, snapping the clasp into place. “You can take your time,” he said. “Just lock up when you leave.”

Clint blinked at him. “Uh.”

“There’s coffee in the pot,” Phil said as he picked his leather satchel up and slung the strap over his shoulder. He bent down to press a final kiss to the corner of Clint’s mouth, and then he was gone.

Clint lay in Phil’s bed for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling. There was a very dim light coming in through the bedroom window. He scrubbed a hand over his face and then dragged himself to the edge of the bed and groped around on the floor, trying to find his pants. After that he had to sift through the various pockets to find his phone. Stark phones were far too thin, in Clint’s opinion, and nowhere near heavy enough. Clint had once concussed a man with a Nokia 3310. That was a phone that was good in the field, and SHIELD still had a stock of them for missions where the asset was likely to get bounced around. Clint finally located his phone and rolled onto his back, squinting at the bright screen as he typed out a text to Natasha.

**Phil went to work and left me in his apartment. What do i do.**

Natasha replied almost immediately.

**IT IS 630 WHY ARE YOU TEXTING ME ON DOWNTIME**

Clint frowned at his phone, and then sent his message to Bruce instead. Natasha probably wouldn’t have a lot of advice to give on the subject. Clint had once left Natasha alone in his SHIELD quarters and when he had come back she’d stolen his toothpaste and the good pillow. She wasn’t the best role model when it came to acting respectfully in other people’s space.

Clint’s phone vibrated when Bruce called in his reply. “Hey,” Clint said as he accepted the call.

“Don’t freak out,” Bruce said in his soft, warm voice, “but being left in an apartment is a sign of trust.”

Clint frowned. “Why would I freak out over that?”

“Why indeed?” Bruce returned, and Clint made a rude noise at him. “Assuming that he knows you’re there, it’s a good thing.”

“Yeah, he just left for work. I’m still in bed.”

“Then catch another few hours of sleep,” Bruce advised. “Help yourself to breakfast but don’t finish anything in the fridge. You can leave a note if you’re feeling sappy.” Clint made a face at that suggestion. “Lock up when you leave,” Bruce concluded.

“Yeah, I had that part figured out already.”

“I take it you had a good reunion then,” Bruce said, a teasing note entering his voice. “If he left you to sleep in all day.”

“Oh god you pervert,” Clint replied, laughing a little as he rolled over onto his stomach. “Go live vicariously through someone else’s relationship. Go pump Tony for details, you know he loves to overshare.”

“And he loves to be pumped,” Bruce volleyed back.

“Ugh, thanks for that,” Clint said through a grimace, and he hung up on the sound of Bruce laughing.

Clint napped for another hour and then dragged himself out of the very comfortable bed and padded through Phil’s apartment in his shirt and underpants, scratching his fingers through his bed hair. It was strange being alone in Phil’s apartment. Clint had spent a few moments by himself on Phil’s couch before, but that had been with the knowledge that Phil would walk through the door at any moment. 

Phil was gone for the day, wouldn’t be home for hours and hours. The back of Clint’s neck started to prickle uncomfortably. He could do anything. He could rummage through drawers. He could place listening devices with care and precision, comb all over the apartment and find those little nooks that no one would ever think to check. Even Tony, who had felt the need to collect the whole set of superheroes and keep them all in one box, didn’t leave people like Clint alone. There was always someone around, always Tony’s own sweeps of the tower and its systems, always Jarvis to watch over people’s shoulders. 

Clint sagged against the kitchen counter, grabbed the jug of coffee and took a swig from it. Bruce was right. It was a lot of trust.

Clint walked around Phil’s apartment as he drank his morning coffee. The fake ID wasn’t on the bedside table, nor was it in the drawer. He did find condoms, lube, a tangle of chargers and loose batteries, and a watch that had stopped. He took the time to look out Phil’s windows and admire the view of the building opposite. It had a mural stretching across the ground floor and very few windows facing Phil’s own building. Clint looked at the books on Phil’s shelves, which were mostly slim volumes with a few DVDs slotted in next to books of the same name. A random sampling suggested that they were all young adult novels, though the top shelf was dedicated to thicker, hardcover books. Clint thought that one of them might have been a book of poetry as the author seemed familiar, but he had no idea whether books were deeply personal to Phil and he felt like he could be intruding if he were to flick through it.

Clint returned to the bedroom to collect his clothes. Mittens the Second had claimed the place of pride in the centre of the bed, and she watched Clint warily as he moved around the room. Mittens was a little cat, grey and white with a big fluffy squirrel tail. She had a tendency to scramble and fall off things when she got startled. Clint wasn’t an expert on house cats, but he suspected that she was a little weird. Phil had been very firm in his assertion that Mittens was a sweetie.

“Hey,” Clint said to the cat. Mittens looked nervous, her ears twitching around as if she suspected more people hidden in the room would pipe up with salutations. She seemed legitimately distressed by any situation in which Clint made eye contact with her, so Clint gathered his items and carried them into the living area to get dressed. He didn’t want to have to break it to Phil that he’d given the cat an anxiety attack.

Clint called Phil as he pulled his laces tight. “When are you free this week?” he asked without preamble.

“Uh,” Clint heard Phil flicking through some papers. “How about I just e-mail you my calendar?”

“Sure,” Clint replied. “That works.”

“And I should be free tonight, if you wanted to do an early dinner,” Phil added. “There’s a concert committee meeting I need to be at.”

“Dinner sounds good. I’ll pick you up from school. What time?”

Phil made a clicking noise with his tongue as he considered the question. “Fiiive?” he suggested cautiously.

“Five-ish,” Clint compromised. “We’ll play it loose this time.”

“Alright,” Phil said, and his voice warm and happy. “I’ll see you then.”

Clint disconnected the call and picked his jacket up off the couch, where he had dumped it the night before. His helmet was sitting neatly by the door where he had left it. He looked around the apartment for anything else that he might have left out of place, and then left quietly and locked the door behind him.

He was three blocks away when he realised that he had left the empty coffee pot on Phil’s bedside table. At least it was somewhere Phil was likely to find it.

Clint wove his way through the New York traffic. He’d left just in time to catch the morning peak hour crawl and cab drivers cussed at him as he split up the lanes and cruised past them. He got to the tower in time to grab breakfast with Natasha, who had just woken up, and Tony, who was just heading to bed.

“Can I use your pool?” Clint asked Tony.

“Which one?” Tony replied, staring at him blearily.

“Any of them?” 

Tony seemed to think it over, though Clint knew that he probably wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Or if he was, they were all pointing in different directions. “Sure,” he said at last. “But no naked swimming.”

“You swim naked,” Natasha pointed out.

“They’re my pools,” Tony returned. “I might let you swim naked though. If you ask nicely.” Natasha flicked some of her muffin at Tony and he shook his head in disappointment before carrying himself off to bed, muttering about young people and their lack of manners as he went.

“Have fun with Phil?” Natasha asked.

“Yeah,” Clint replied as he stole her juice. “Did you know that he made a fake SHIELD ID?”

Natasha smiled. “Yup.”

Clint gave her a stern look. “Did you know that he still has it?”

Natasha’s smile widened to a grin. “Yup.” Clint gave her a sour look, and she rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend like you follow the rules all of a sudden,” she said bluntly. “And a crafty guy is quite the catch.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” Clint asked. “That he managed to just throw something like that together?”

“He had yours to work off,” Natasha replied, giving Clint a pointed look for leaving his wallet lying around in the first place. “And he’s got friends who are still in the armed forces.”

“He does?”

“Yeah, navy buddies,” Natasha replied. “One of them just had a kid or something and he showed me some photos of it while you were out of it. And his cat.”

“Phil broke into a SHIELD facility and showed you pictures of his cat,” Clint repeated flatly.

Natasha shrugged. “It’s not like you were great company at the time. And it’s a pretty cute cat.”

Clint leaned the stool he sat on back on two legs, his forearms on the bench as he tightened his stomach and stretched out his back. He frowned at Natasha’s juice, and she leaned over and patted his hand. “Cheer up,” she said. “You’ve dated some losers in the past. A lot of losers. And crazy people. And to be honest, I’m really surprised that you picked Mister Museum out on your own.”

“Thanks,” Clint said sarcastically.

“The point is, you attract people who break rules just to see if they can get away with it. This time you have someone who did it because he was worried about you and wanted to be there no matter how it panned out.” Clint frowned and turned Natasha’s words over in her head. “Cut him some slack,” Natasha advised. “How often does anyone worry about people like us anyway?”

Clint glanced up at Natasha. “I worry about you,” he countered, and she snorted. “What? You don’t worry about me?”

“If I started worrying about you,” Natasha said with a serious voice and a dimple at the corner of her mouth, “I’d never have the time to do anything else.” She slid off her stool and collected the dirty plates that littered the bench. 

“I’m really feeling the love here.”

“Go do your physio.”

~*~

Clint arrived at Crosstown High a little earlier than he had intended. Pepper had found out about the vague dinner plans and had wrestled Clint into an ensemble that was apparently ‘smart casual’. He’d been allowed to keep his jeans and boots, but his soft and worn tee had been exchanged for a crisp white button up shirt and a grey wool pullover with caramel-coloured patches of firm velvet at the elbows.

“Are you buying clothes for me now?” Clint had grumbled as he swatted Pepper away.

“I got it for Bruce but he’s not much of a sweater person,” Pepper said, regarding Clint critically and tugging at the sweater until it sat right.

“Too preppy,” Bruce called from the couch. “And the Other Guy isn’t the biggest fan of clothes in general.”

“Maybe he just hates your clothes,” Clint shot back. “Maybe Pepper should take him out shopping.”

“Well, we need to get you some new clothes anyway,” Pepper said as she fussed with Clint’s collar and Clint tried to bat her hands away. “Bruce can tag along.”

“Yeah, Bruce,” Clint had parroted childishly. “Tag along.”

Bruce had stuck his tongue out at Clint and then turned back to the television. Clint managed to escape under the guise of being late before Pepper could style his hair and douse him with some new cologne. Clint had already showered until he no longer smelled of chlorine and had rolled on some deodorant, and such high levels of grooming had been appreciated by Phil so far. No need to overdo it.

There was a police car parked out the front of the school. Clint frowned as he pulled his helmet off and held it by the chin strap. School had let out over an hour ago, and Clint didn’t encounter anyone during his walk to the office. Nina looked up when he stepped through the door and, after a moment of staring at him blankly, clapped a hand to her forehead.

“Oh shit,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t think to call you.”

“What?” Clint asked, stepping up to her desk. “What happened?” The door to Phil’s office was open and Clint leaned over to one side and craned his neck so he could peer inside. Phil was sitting at his desk, talking to what looked like quite a crowd of people. He caught Clint’s movement and turned to glance into the office area. He was holding an ice pack to his face, and he gave Clint the smallest shake of his head. _Don’t come in here,_ Phil’s expression said. Clint looked back to Nina and raised his eyebrows.

“Phillip,” Nina said pointedly, and she managed to communicate with just one word that Phil was in the bad books, “got in a fight.”

“A fight?”

“Mm. Two kids were getting their punch on, so he stepped in to break it up and _wham!_ He got clocked in the head with a pole.”

“A pole?”

“One of those handlebars from a shopping cart.” 

“He got hit with a shopping cart pole?”

Nina nodded. “Don’t ask me why a kid brings a pole to school. In my day you’d be ashamed of yourself.”

“Right.”

“It was flick knives or nothing.”

Clint took a moment to reassess Nina as she poked savagely at her keyboard. “But Phil’s okay?” he pressed.

“They cracked his head open and he’s gonna have a nasty bruise, but it doesn’t look like he’s concussed or anything. Which I’m sure the punks are disappointed about, because holy hell has he got them scared,” Nina replied with a smirk.

Clint returned her smile for a moment, then glanced at the office clock. “I guess Phil’s gonna be tied up here for a while.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Understatement.”

“Should I go grab him some takeaway, or..?”

“Karen, she’s the head of the music department, is going to bring some pizza in for him. The kid with the pole is in the concert band so I think she feels a little responsible. We’re going to try to pack him off home once all the boring stuff is taken care of.”

“Right,” Clint said. “Good.” There really wasn’t anything he could do to help the situation. He could hear a number of terse adult voices bickering in Phil’s office, and knew that stealing Phil away for a moment or two was not a viable option. Clint leaned back over until he caught sight of Phil and waited for Phil to notice him. When Phil looked over, Clint gave him a look that he hoped sent a message somewhere in the ballpark of ‘I’m sorry you got hurt but I understand that these things happen’. Natasha had once told Clint that he had the expressive range of an angry duck, but Phil seemed to get the message. Clint waved, and Phil nodded in acknowledgement, and then Clint said goodbye to Nina and let everyone get on with it.

~*~

Clint frowned at his phone over breakfast the next morning. Phil had a lot of appointments in his calendar. All of them were abbreviated, and Clint had been puzzling over the combinations of letters and numbers until he’d accidentally brushed the screen with his thumb and had opened up the appointment listing, which was slightly more coherent. Phil had to deal with a lot of committees, with the various departments within the school, with education bodies outside of the school, with training and reviews and assessments. And on top of that, he had time blocked out every day for students to drop in and talk about things. Clint wondered if the students at Crosstown High did hang out with their principal or if Phil spent that time organising and reorganising his desk. Clint had never talked to a teacher or a principal of his own free will back when he had been in school, but it had been an atypical childhood.

“You know,” Tony said as he made a beeline for the coffee machine, “you can always just increase the font size on that thing if it’s giving you eyestrain.”

“My eyes are fine,” Clint replied automatically. “It’s not the display, it’s the content.”

“Do you need me to send you the links to some cat videos? There’s a persistent kitten I think you’ll really enjoy.”

Clint frowned. Between Phil’s schedule and Clint’s own commitments to SHIELD there was a very limited amount of time in which they were both free. If he factored in travel time, then he was basically looking at a “hello” and a kiss on the cheek before they needed to get back to other things. Even Phil’s evenings, which had previously been free for phone calls, were filling up with different events and meetings and workshops as the school year headed towards its eventual conclusion. Clint glanced up from his phone and saw that Tony was watching him intently. 

Tony was clearly in a mood to be sociable. Clint needed some input, and since Tony was one of the few people in the tower who was actually in a relationship he possibly wasn’t the worst option available. Clint sighed and cut to the chase. “How do you and Pepper get the time to do anything?”

“Pepper takes care of it,” Tony replied. “I mean, I try. I’m always telling her to take time off and run away to the islands with me for a few weeks, but she hasn’t taken me up on the offer yet. I don’t know if she plans it all in advance or if she just slides things around when one of us is free.” Tony shrugged. “I just look pretty when she tells me to.”

Clint gave Tony a critical look. He was wearing pyjama pants with the chemical formula for caffeine printed over them, and a white singlet that was lit up in the centre by his arc reactor. His hair had gone beyond messy and into some kind of matted-beast territory. He had probably slept right through since Clint had seen him the previous day. “Very pretty,” he said at last, and Tony batted his eyelashes as Clint.

“You having problems with date night?” Tony asked.

Clint was reluctant to answer because Tony had a habit of grabbing a problem with both hands and refusing to let go until it was resolved to his satisfaction _and_ had rocket launchers attached and Jarvis installed. While Clint was feeling a little less jumpy around his teammates since his health retreat with Bruce, there was still a finite volume of Tony Stark that he could handle in one week and he was reluctant to hit his limit by Tuesday. But Tony was staring at him expectantly, and Tony apparently had some experience with being in a relationship with busy people since Pepper was still putting up with him.

“Just lining one up,” Clint explained. “Phil’s busy, I’m busy.” He shrugged as he looked back at his phone. “I think that’s going to get annoying.”

“Yeah, probably,” Tony agreed before taking a large bite out of a toasted bagel. “You gotta learn the joys of bucking responsibility. He’s got a meeting? Get him to skip it. You’ve got a million of those lecture things to sit through? Play hooky. What the hell are SHIELD going to do? Make you sit in the naughty corner?”

“I am in the naughty corner,” Clint replied. “That’s why I’m here.”

Tony looked affronted for a moment and Clint met his gaze passively. “Really?” Tony asked, pressing a hand to his reactor. “Hanging out with me is a punishment now?”

“Have you met you?” Clint returned, and Tony let out a sharp laugh.

“I’d probably want to kick my ass too if I had to put up with me,” Tony agreed. “But I’d eventually win myself over. Even I have to admit that I’m a pretty great guy. On the inside. Deep down.”

“Below the personality.”

“Exactly. But if Principal Hottie has something on, just tell him to cancel.”

Clint looked back at his phone and frowned. “I don’t think that’s going to work.” He could see Tony gearing up to launch into some kind of pep talk, so Clint hurried to elaborate. “He really cares about his job. Passionate, you know?”

“Ah, that does make it tricky.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, on the off chance that you have some people skills stashed away somewhere-”

“I’m good with people,” Clint protested, and Tony ignored him. 

“-you could always stack the deck so it’s his decision to cancel plans to hang out with you. Trick him into it.”

Clint had a horrible, chilling vision of some kind of elaborate plot to manipulate Phil into having no other options _but_ to hang out, and wrinkled his nose. “Sounds nice and healthy,” he said flatly.

“No, it’s great,” Tony insisted around a mouthful of muffin. “It works great on everyone who is not Pepper. And even then it sometimes works on Pepper.” 

Tony left it there, leaned against the counter and ate his muffin, waited for Clint to either ask for more details or shut down the conversation. It annoyed Clint a little. Natasha often did the same thing, but she had a coil to her posture when she did – it was playful, making Clint drag every last detail out of her. With Tony it was a way to assert his power. If Clint didn’t play into Tony’s hands and beg for help then Tony would simply jump along to the next step of the problem and wait for Clint to catch up, leaving Clint in Tony’s debt no matter how it played out. Clint had observed the same process between Tony and Steve, and then Tony and Bruce. There had been no great wooing of Natasha into Tony’s abode simply because she knew a good deal when she saw it, and Clint suspected that Thor didn’t understand that Tony’s hospitality was a kind of game. Clint certainly didn’t understand what Tony got out of it all. Maybe it was the ego trip of having people depend on him, of having so many favours to call in if he should need them. 

Apparently it was Clint’s turn to be recruited to Team Stark. Clint already owed Tony for his assistance with the last date night, he didn’t need more debt added to his account at Stark Tower.

“I think I’ll stick to my current game plan,” he finally replied.

“Of sitting and moping?” Tony shot back as he pushed himself away from the bench. “Well, I guess it’s tried and tested.” He clapped Clint on the shoulder as he passed. “Have fun with that, pretty bird.”

“Will do,” Clint replied dutifully.

~*~

Bruce tracked Clint down several hours later as he was stretched out on his stomach to drip-dry at the edge of one of Tony’s several swimming pools. “Isn’t it a bit cold for the swimming trunks?” Bruce asked as he approached.

“You’d rather I take them off?” Clint retorted.

“Careful, I might swoon” Bruce said, grabbing the back of a metal chair and dragging it over to Clint. “The shoulder looks good.”

“Yeah?” Clint twisted his head around, trying to catch a glimpse of the healing skin. “Does it look weird?”

“Looks like a shoulder,” Bruce reported as he sat down on the chair, facing Clint. “No tan yet though. You’ve got an empty patch.”

“Lock that in,” Clint said, pointing a stern finger at Bruce. “You never know when you’ll have to pick the real Clint Barton out of a line up.” 

“So I heard you got under Tony’s skin this morning,” Bruce said, as though it were a natural continuation of the conversation. 

Clint groaned and let his head drop forwards, pressing his face against the rough side of the pool. “I did not,” he replied, his voice muffled. Bruce poked Clint with one of his feet, and Clint pushed himself back up onto his elbows. “He offered some advice. I chose not to take it. It’s no big deal.”

“He thinks you don’t like him.”

“Look, in his defence, there are a lot of people I don’t like.” Bruce snorted, and Clint looked up at him in surprise.

“You get along with everyone,” Bruce replied. “You always help out. When Tony was being himself at Steve, you would always crack a joke to make Steve feel more at home. Whenever you sign autographs you always ask people their names.”

“Are you not meant to ask names?”

“Steve’s given up on trying,” Bruce replied, as if that settled the matter.

“The only people who want my scribble are kids,” Clint returned. “You’ve got to ask kids.”

“You helped Pepper move the furniture in her office because you didn’t want her to have to wait for moving men to come up and do it.”

“She’d had a really shitty day,” Clint returned. “And I live under her roof rent free.”

“It’s Tony’s roof, too,” Bruce pointed out.

“Tony is Tony,” Clint replied, as if that would explain the whole tangle of personalities that Clint struggled to deal with. 

“And?” Bruce asked patiently. 

Clint huffed out a sigh. “And he’s flashy.”

“You used to run around in purple Lycra and spangles,” Bruce pointed out. People always felt the need to bring up the circus outfit. 

“Yeah,” Clint replied. “And then I stopped.”

“You think Tony’s childish?”

“No,” Clint replied, resting his chin on one forearm. “Well, yes, but I don’t have a problem with it.” He turned his face to one side and looked up at Bruce again. “Did you come down here for a reason, or did you just want to play Doctor Phil?”

“I just don’t think that whatever’s going on between you two is going to get better if you keep acting abrasive.”

“Tony’s abrasive,” Clint retorted, which was an understatement at best.

Bruce shrugged in response. “Tony is Tony,” he replied. “So, have you managed to line up a date with Phil?”

Clint gave Bruce a deeply unimpressed look. “Are you all gossiping about me? Is that how you’re all bonding now?”

“Entertainment has been a little thin since Steve got his head around the internet,” Bruce replied. “And it’s not like the rest of us are overwhelmed with romance. Let us live vicariously through you.”

Clint made a face. “I’m not the biggest fan of things trying to live vicariously through me.”

Bruce poked Clint with the toe of his shoe. “We’ll be gentle with you. But I actually came down to talk to you about those SHIELD seminars.”

“Oh yeah, those will be fun,” Clint said dryly.

“I was thinking we could try to get them done all in one hit,” Bruce suggested. “Get them out of the way.”

Clint was momentarily surprised – he had assumed that Bruce would go along to the times that suited, and that in comparison Clint would avoid attending at all until Sitwell got on his case about it. “Sure, I guess,” Clint replied. Keeping himself occupied during Phil’s busy period seemed like a good idea. Bruce put his feet up on Clint’s side, balanced his tablet on his knees, and started sorting through the schedule of compulsory seminars that comprised their shared punishment.

~*~

By Thursday, Clint was restless. He couldn’t train because he was barred from SHIELD facilities until he had attended the required seminars and passed a short test on each one. There was only so much time Clint could spend in the water before his shoulder started to seize up and he ran the risk of getting so waterlogged that the pool and he would become one. Steve had apparently cottoned on to the friction between Clint and Tony, and spent his free time talking to them individually and _casually_ bringing the absent party into the conversation. Clint liked Steve well enough – it was actually very hard not to like someone who had once punched his way into a tank and then later that same day had been completely incapacitated by a Pixar movie – but after the second conversation he simply started avoiding the Cap. It seemed like the best way to preserve their casual friendship, despite the hurt looks Steve gave him.

Clint and Phil had been texting. Their Safe Sex Standard Operating Procedure had been negotiated and finalised (and Clint had been completely floored by Phil referring to it as an SOP. Apparently there was a significant overlap in terminology when it came to government intelligence agencies and secondary education). Clint had protested the requirement that Phil wear a condom if Clint were to provide oral sex, but Phil had presented rationale that Clint wasn’t the only one who had been injured so far during their relationship, and that it was better to be safe than sorry. Clint had countered that half of the fun of giving a blowjob was the mix of taste and smell and the feel of skin on his tongue, of precome smearing across his lips and the slickness of it at the back of his mouth. 

The topic of SOPs had been abandoned for a while as they traded increasingly steamy text messages. Clint had just about worked up the courage to casually mention the possibility that they both call in sick for the rest of the week and instead spend their time productively in bed, naked and sweaty and possibly licking chocolate syrup off one another, when Phil had to exit the conversation to attend an exam-preparation teaching techniques workshop. Clint spent a moment, painfully hard and more than a little frustrated, indulging in a childhood fantasy of being a bad guy and shutting down the school system forever. It now had the added postscript of him scooping Phil up into his giant robot of evil and taking him back to his dark lair of evil, and then engaging in a little debauching (evil optional).

Clint really needed some time with Phil. Looking at it from a tactical perspective, patient surveillance and tracking had failed to provide and opening to achieve the intended goal. In order for the mission to advance there would need to be an introduction of controlled events in order to catalyse the desired outcome. Or, put simply, Clint needed help organising his own damn love life. That painful admission was enough to kill the remnants of arousal thudding through him, so Clint sighed heavily and decided to just get the begging over with.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint jogged up the steps to the school’s front office, doing his best to radiate attractiveness and confidence. That had been Tony’s secret seduction plan – turn up, look attractive, leave with a pretty lady in tow. If the pretty lady turned down the advances, leave with grace and good humour and maybe try to seduce the secretary on the way out. In this instance, the role of the pretty lady would be played by one Phillip Coulson, and the role of charming playboy had been cut entirely and substituted by that of the awkward archer. Albeit, he was now an awkward archer who had been gussied up by experts in the field of looking attractive. There would be no seducing of secretaries.

Clint was wearing one of the flashy suits Pepper had secreted into his wardrobe. He was wearing shoes that were shiny and unscuffed. There was cologne involved. He’d taken a taxi because there was no way the suit would have lasted under his motorbike jacket without some serious rumpling, and there was nothing sexy about coming off a bike in a suit and losing half of his skin to the road beneath him. He had his sunglasses on and a paper bag in his hand, and the few students milling around looked at him with interest.

He gave Nina a warm smile as he walked past her desk and her mouth hung open. Gregory was using the photocopier, and as he turned to keep Clint in view the stack of papers in his short arms tumbled to the floor. Clint decided to take the attention as a good sign. He rapped on the frosted window of Phil’s office door and lounged against the doorframe. Clint had called ahead and gotten the all clear to drop in for a quick visit, and Phil looked like he could use the distraction – his lunch had been pushed to one corner of his desk and was only half eaten. He had three different mugs with varying levels of coffee in them on the desk, on the top of one of his filing cabinets, and on the window sill. 

“Hi,” he said vaguely, glancing over at Clint. Then he paused, took his glasses off, and looked Clint over again.

“Hi,” Clint replied, and tried not to feel too smug about the way Phil leaned back in his office chair to appreciate the view. Judging by the amused smile that settled onto Phil’s face, he had minimal success.

“What’s the occasion?” Phil asked in a quiet, contained tone that made Clint shiver because he knew that Phil could say absolutely filthy things in that very same voice.

“No occasion,” he replied as he took his sunglasses off. He went to hook them at the front of his shirt and found a tie in the way. He tucked them into a pocket inside his jacket instead, and Phil very politely didn’t do more than smile affectionately at the blunder. “End of my laundry cycle,” Clint lied as he stepped closer and leaned a hip against Phil’s desk. “Thought I might mix things up a little. I also brought presents.” Clint reached into the paper bag and pulled out a small container of freshly ground hazelnut coffee, and a donut in a clear container. The donut was star-shaped and decorated with purple icing and pink sprinkles. Clint didn’t know Phil’s specific donut preferences, but he figured that no one could turn down such a happy looking pastry.

Phil managed to tear his gaze away from the tokens of affection and raised his eyes to Clint’s face, taking a scenic route of meandering appreciation up Clint’s body, stopping for a brief respite at the neat pocket square at Clint’s breast. When he finally dragged his eyes up to meet Clint’s own, he was smiling with amusement. “This definitely seems like an occasion,” he observed.

Phil had a small but sharp-looking cut at the outer edge of his right eyebrow, and some dark bruising around it that was still dark and purple looking. There was a smudge of yellow-green edging under his eye. Clint suspected that it was only the swift application of ice that had saved Phil from sporting a black eye to work for the week. “How’s the head?” Clint asked.

“Still working,” Phil replied. “And yours?”

“Keeping busy,” Clint replied. He moved Phil’s sandwich and took its place, resting part of his butt on the corner of Phil’s desk with a slice of his thigh running along the length.

“I’ll bet,” Phil replied, still smiling.

Clint took a moment to look around Phil’s office, as if he had all of the time in the world. There was a large bookcase dominating the back wall, and it was filled with more novels, dvds, and videos. Clint assumed that they had to do with the various classes being taught, as he knew that Phil liked to have at least a passing familiarity with every text being taught at his school so he could deal with angry parents when someone inevitably complained about the content. Clint surveyed Phil’s little domain and Phil surveyed Clint in turn, the way the material of his trousers was pulled tight across his thigh, the way Clint had his hands clasped near the top of his leg, the way he was drawing circles on the back of one hand with the thumb of the other. Phil’s expression suddenly shifted as he tried to fight back a wide smile.

“Are you trying to seduce me out of the office?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Clint protested. “Why, is it working?”

Phil laughed once in response and leaned back in his computer chair, letting his gaze rove over Clint’s body again. He smoothed a hand down his own tie, an action that seemed designed to keep his fingers occupied. “A little,” he said at last.

“In my head, it was a lot more suave and flirty,” Clint admitted.

“I like this version,” Phil replied.

Clint bit back a grin, and then grabbed the edge of the desk and extended one leg out so he could push the office door closed with his toe. “I know you have a thing on tonight,” he said. “I thought we could maybe class up the staff room coffee.” There had been a ‘staff event’ listed in Phil’s calendar. Tony had called Pepper in order to convince Clint that staff events could always be skipped, and Pepper had agreed that they were usually fairly non-compulsory. Regardless of their assurances, Clint was going to give Phil every opportunity to shake him off if he wanted to.

Phil picked up the packet off coffee and examined the label. Steve had recommended it, keen to contribute to operation ‘Distract Principal Hottie’ in any way that he could. Clint figured that any coffee that was good enough for Steve to purchase without complaining about the price must be worth investigating. “This is far too good for the staff room,” Phil replied. “If anyone else even smells this, I’m going to get mugged and have my coffee stolen.”

“I’ll protect you,” Clint offered and Phil gave him a skeptical look. Clint wasn’t sure if Phil was doubting his ability to fight off some frenzied teachers, or if he was merely suspicious of what such protection would involve.

“Perhaps,” Phil suggested slowly, “in an effort to keep me from getting even more battered this week, we could take the coffee home and consume it in safety.”

“But you have a thing,” Clint protested. “An important thing that I would never dream of tearing you away from.” 

“You liar,” Phil replied with a smile.

“I may have dreams about tearing your clothes off,” Clint admitted. “But never of distracting you from your duties.”

Phil swivelled back and forth in his chair, his cheek propped against a fist. “I thought this was meant to be a seduction,” he commented. “If it’s been downgraded to a distraction already…”

“I didn’t want to pressure you into a seduction,” Clint clarified. “If you’re up for being seduced, I can make that happen.”

“If I say ‘no’ do I still get the keep the coffee?” Phil asked.

Clint looked down at his gifts. “I guess,” he said after some consideration. “But the donut stays with me.”

Phil regarded the presents with a serious expression, and then finally sighed in defeat. “I guess I’m getting seduced then,” he said sombrely. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Clint said with as much false sincerity as he could muster. “I know this must be hard for you.”

“I suspect it’ll get harder as the night progresses,” Phil replied flatly, and Clint couldn’t help snorting a laugh. Phil turned to his computer. “Let me just break the news to Nina that she’s serving drinks alone tonight,” he said as he opened the e-mail application.

“Are you sure?” Clint persisted. “Because if you need to go…”

Phil took a moment to look over at Clint again, to admire the suit he wore and the way he had gradually sprawled over Phil’s desk. “Something more important just came up,” Phil replied.

Clint’s grin twisted into a smirk. “I bet it did,” he said with a leer in his voice.

Phil snorted, and threw a pen at him. Clint caught it neatly and returned it to the mug of pens on Phil’s desk. “Out,” Phil instructed as he clicked ‘send’. “Go and entertain yourself while I pack up, you horrible distraction.”

“Best distraction,” Clint corrected as he pushed away from Phil’s desk, and Phil didn’t deny it.

~*~

They shared the star-shaped donut as they walked from Crosstown High to Phil’s apartment building. The wind was picking up as they went, letting Clint know that while Spring Break may be approaching the warmer weather was not guaranteed. If lightning happened to flicker in the distance, Clint firmly ignored it. Clint’s plan had been to listen to Phil talk about his week, but Phil was still convinced that he was a boring person (despite the wyrm in his library and the various skirmishes he had been involved in so far).  
“The most interesting thing that’s happened to me was getting dragged into an argument with my neighbours and my landlord about a possible gas leak in the building,” Phil said idly.

“You’re ranking that higher than getting hit in the head with a pole?”

“I’ve been hit with more interesting things,” Phil replied, shrugging the incident off. 

Not that Clint minded the way Phil seemed to enjoy hearing him talk, not that he wasn’t relieved to have the chance to unload a fraction of his angst to someone who wasn’t concerned primarily by the ‘team dynamic’.

Clint complained about being bored, about the physiotherapy he had to do and the shooting he wasn’t allowed to do, about the politics of eating just about anything in the Stark Tower fridge. Phil didn’t tell Clint to stop his moaning or to suck it up. He looked amused when Clint exaggerated and sympathetic when Clint understated. Best of all, Phil ate his half of the star by pulling it to little pieces one bit at a time, and then biting the piece off the pad of his thumb, pausing occasionally to suck the accumulated frosting away. It seemed entirely innocent, and Phil looked genuinely surprised when Clint commented that Phil shouldn’t be allowed to eat in public if he was going to do it so indecently. But Clint noticed that after he had made the observation Phil seemed to take more care in scraping the donut from the pad of his thumb with his teeth, in hollowing his cheeks just slightly as he sucked the digit clean.

“You fucking tease,” Clint said, purposefully looking away. He was the one meant to be doing the seducing, after all.

“I was under the impression that it only countered as a tease if you don’t intend to deliver,” Phil replied, a warm curl in his voice. Their shoulders brushed together as they walked, and Clint felt so wonderfully content with his life in that moment.

They had both finished eating by the time they reached Phil’s neighbourhood, and after a few instances of the backs of their hands grazing as they walked side-by-side, Clint took Phil’s hand in his own and Phil laced their fingers together. They took the elevator up to Phil’s floor rather than taking the stairs and, to Clint’s delight, Phil used the moment to lean in and steal a kiss. Once kiss became two, became an unbroken string of events in which lips touched and Phil’s palm cupped Clint’s hip. Their fingers were still entangled. Clint closed his eyes at the second kiss and when he opened them again, when Phil had sucked on Clint’s lower lip and then eased away, it was to the sight of Phil watching him with a small smile and an otherwise indescribable expression.

“What?” Clint asked, his voice a little husky.

“This is our stop,” Phil replied, and he tugged Clint out of the elevator.

Clint stood close behind Phil as he unlocked the door to his apartment, nuzzling the back of Phil’s shoulders, kissing up into his short hair and making Phil huff in a pleased fashion. Phil turned then, pushing the door open with his back and grasping the front of Clint’s jacket, pulling him inside. Clint kicked the door closed behind him and shrugged out of his jacket. He tried to drop it on the ground, but Phil took it from him and hung it by the door. Clint could hear the soft thud and frenzied scrabbling that marked Mittens making a dash for the bedroom. They exchanged warm, lazy kisses as Phil pulled Clint down the short hallway and Clint followed eagerly. And then Phil backed Clint up against the wall, took Clint’s sharp gasp of surprise as an invitation to deepen the kiss, to suck on his tongue and devour the long groan of approval that escaped from Clint’s throat.

“Hm,” he said as Phil untucked Clint’s shirt. “I thought I was meant to be doing the seducing.”

“Feel free to take the reins,” Phil replied, and Clint slid a hand along Phil’s jaw, tilted his head back and kissed him with a slow, determined thoroughness. 

It occurred to Clint that he and Phil didn’t kiss enough. He could happily spend hours kissing Phil, being kissed by him. Phil wasn’t an aggressive kisser, didn’t take control of the moment and plunder Clint. Neither was he passive, a slack jaw and loose lips and leaving all of the hard work to Clint. He kissed Clint with gentle exploration, as though he would be happy to take days and days to learn the shape of Clint’s teeth, the texture of the roof of his mouth. He kissed like they were having a conversation, like every advance of Clint’s was a statement and every press of Phil’s mouth in return was a question hoping to draw out more little details. Phil kissed like his goal was to leave Clint a little breathless, and in return Clint saw every moment when they pulled away from one another with little grins on their faces as one of the most addictive achievements of his love life to date.

Clint was thoroughly convinced that kissing needed to be happening a lot more. And then Phil cupped Clint through his pants, and Clint couldn’t help groaning and arching up into the touch. That was another thing that needed to be happening a lot more.

“It’s okay,” Phil said, rubbing his nose against Clint’s cheek.

“Better than okay,” Clint assured him. “That’s... yeah, that’s good.”

Phil chuckled and then dipped his face lower, pressing small, wet kisses along the underside of Clint’s jaw. “Take off your tie,” he said, his voice light and conversational, making it a suggestion rather than a request or an order. 

Clint reached up and fumbled at the knot of silk. Tony had tied it, a thicker and flashier knot than Clint would have fixed himself, and his fingers slipped over the fine fabric as he tried to find the little folds and creases that would allow him to pull it apart. Eventually he yanked the tail out of the knot and then stripped the tie roughly from under his collar and tossed it away. 

Phil moved his mouth down the side of Clint’s neck, sucking gently and licking small, hot, teasing stipes across the exposed skin. Clint hastily thumbed open the top two buttons of his shirt, and tilted his head back when Phil reached up with his free hand to pull the collar out of his way. Phil toyed idly with the skin of Clint’s neck for a moment, as if giving his mouth a distraction while sure fingers traced the lines of Clint’s cock through soft, thin fabric. Then Phil dipped his head down at bit at the base of Clint’s neck, just above where collarbone met throat. Sharp teeth and testing pressure, and Clint thudded his head back against the wall and moaned deeply, arching his back and pressing his hips forward against Phil’s hand wantonly.

“You like that,” Phil observed, his words sinking into sensitive skin before the lowered his mouth again.

“ _Yesss_ ,” Clint hissed. Phil was sucking at the bite mark, pulling blood up through the layers of skin and then pulling away to lick at the bruise, to bite again with gentler teeth and to suck kisses at the edges of that pleased patch of skin. “Yes,” Clint repeated, grinding his dick against Phil’s hand. “Like that.”

Phil curved his palm against the underside of Clint’s shaft, stroking him firmly. “Are you wearing underpants?” he asked.

“No.”

Phil pressed his forehead against Clint’s shoulder. “Fuck,” he mumbled into Clint’s chest.

“I didn’t want a panty line,” Clint added breathlessly. 

Phil was running his thumb in circles around the head of Clint’s cock, encouraging the precome that was leaking from him to soak through the expensive grey fabric. “Fuck,” he repeated, before sucking a breath in through his nose and then mouthing at Clint’s neck again.

“I like it when you swear,” Clint murmured. He had one hand at the back of Phil’s neck, encouraging him to remain in place, and his other hand gripping Phil’s bicep. He could feel the muscle shift under his fingers as Phil stroked his cock, could feel Phil bracing himself against the wall with his other arm so as not to pin Clint down completely. “I like that you’re so neat and clean and perfect, and then when you’re alone with me you say the dirtiest shit.”

“You think ‘fuck’ is dirty?” Phil asked, amusement in his voice. He pressed his hand hard against Clint’s crotch, and Clint rolled up onto his toes and then back down, dragging his cock back and forth along that firm and perfect pressure, loving the way Phil hummed with approval.

“It is when you say it,” Clint returned. He hooked his fingers in the back of Phil’s shirt and pulled Phil away from his neck, pulled him back far enough for Clint to claim Phil’s mouth in a hard and needy kiss.

Phil eased away from Clint’s mouth, leaned his forehead against Clint’s as he jacked him slowly through his pants. Clint could feel Phil’s own hardness pressing against his hip. “The things I want to do with you, Clint,” Phil said, his voice rough. He paused and bit at Clint’s lower lip, sucking it in to his mouth. “I might even make you blush.”

“Tell me,” Clint replied. He was dizzy with want and in that moment Phil could have suggested anything and he would have been entirely on board with it. “Please.”

Phil sucked gently on Clint’s earlobe, his mouth hot and his teeth pressing sharply for a moment. The idea of Phil keeping him like that, of him stroking Clint with maddening patience and murmuring sweet, filthy things into Clint’s ear until Clint came in his pants, pressed against a wall because they were both too desperate to touch to make it all the way to the bedroom. It was enough to cause Clint’s breath to hitch, to make his dick jump in his pants and Phil jacked Clint’s cock firmly in response. Phil pulled his mouth bare millimetres away from Clint’s ear, and inhaled softly, ready to tell Clint exactly what he wanted to do to him.

And that was when Clint’s buzzcomm went off.

“No,” Clint hissed, thudding his head back against the wall. “No, no, fucking no.” Phil was already pulling back, and Clint tightened his hand at the back of Phil’s neck, grabbed Phil’s wrist and kept the warmth of his hand from retreating too far. “Stay,” he said, breathless. “Just... This won’t take long, I promise.”

When he was certain that Phil wouldn’t peel away completely, his fished his buzzcomm out of his pocket and activated it, slipping it in his ear. “Barton,” he said by way of greeting, and he made sure to sound as irritated as possible.

“Sorry,” Sitwell said in response. “We need your eyes.”

“I’m on medical leave,” Clint replied.

“Only from the neck down.”

“Bullshit,” Clint said, and Phil ran a soothing hand back and forth below Clint’s belly button. Clint raised his hips up and gave Phil a hopeful look. Phil stared at him incredulously in response. 

“We’re sending someone to pick you up in five minutes.”

“No way,” Clint replied. “I am on medical leave. I am barred from entering SHIELD sites until further notice. Sitwell, you told me on no uncertain terms that I would not be called in for the rest of the month.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Sitwell replied without sounding especially sincere, “but this is an Avengers operation and you’re on the team. I’m transferring you to Captain Rogers to negotiate pickup.”

Clint clapped a hand over his ear, hopefully preventing the comm from picking up his words. “Don’t stop,” he said, pulling Phil close. “Please, _please_ don’t stop.” Phil flexed his fingers and the tips grazed across the front of Clint’s pants, making him groan. “I need this more than fucking air right now,” he said, his voice low and thin and desperate.

Phil stared at him for a moment, clearly weighing up his options. Clint could still feel Phil’s hardness, could see the sharp simmer of arousal in his eyes. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”Phil asked at last.

“It’ll be fine,” Clint replied, arching as Phil relaxed. “I’ve done this before.”

Phil looked at him curiously then, and Clint kicked himself because maybe asserting that he had a long and sordid history of sexual encounters _wasn’t_ the best way to maintain the mood. But Phil’s expression quickly turned amused at Clint’s cringing. “Oh really?” he asked, pressing back against Clint, cupping him through those soft, thin trousers and grinding his palm against Clint’s erection. “You’re an expert at this?”

“Well,” Clint said, his breathing a little erratic as Phil rubbed him, hard and messy with the flat of his palm. “Maybe not an expert. I’m always willing to learn a thing or two.”

“Hawkeye,” Steve said by way of greeting, and Clint dropped his hand away from his ear.

“Hey Cap,” he replied, and Phil’s grip tightened momentarily, making Clint see stars. He really needed to buy some time. “What the hell is going on out there?” he asked as Phil unclasped his belt and opened Clint’s pants. “Sitwell sounded like he was having kittens.”

“There’s a swarm of things,” Steve replied. Usually Clint could read a lot from a situation by the tone of Steve’s voice, but Phil’s hand was wrapped around his cock and was stroking him with maddening slowness.

“Shame,” Clint said. “I’m all out of bug spray.”

“Thor is currently herding them out to sea but we need you to call out attack formations.”

“Uh-huh,” Clint said. Phil was looking down at his hand around Clint’s cock, was watching the way he dragged his own thumb back and forth across the slick head and was chewing on his lower lip while he did it. Clint wanted Phil’s mouth on him, on him anywhere. 

“You’ll be in the jet,” Steve continued. “We think Tony and Thor can take them out, but the computers aren’t doing a great job of predicting the swarm movements. That’s where you come in.”

“Great,” Clint said as Phil twisted his hand at the top of the stroke, as he played his fingertips up and down over the little bundle of nerves at the underside of the head of Clint’s dick. “That’s so great.” Phil was stroking him slowly, his gaze flicking up to Clint’s face at regular intervals to track Clint’s expression, which was stuck somewhere between ‘shameless arousal’ and ‘desperately close’. Phil’s grip was wet and slick, milking precome and spreading it down the shaft.

“... Are you alright?” Steve asked, his voice sounding so strange in Clint’s ear when all Clint wanted to hear was Phil’s voice, Phil’s ragged breathing.

“Yes,” Clint said. Phil glanced up at him then, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He adjusted his grip, sped up his strokes and Clint had to squeeze his eyes shut because it felt so good it was overwhelming. “Oh fuck,” he groaned

Clint could hear Steve mumbling on the other end of the comm, talking to someone around him, and then his voice came back loud and clear. “Clint, where are you? Have you hit your head again?”

“Steve,” Clint said, his voice tight and needy and Clint was entirely beyond caring how blatant he sounded. “I’m on a fucking date. The only head that is being hit right now-”

There was a sudden noise of realisation over the comm, and then a clatter that sounded a lot like Steve had ripped his headset off and dropped it on the console. Clint let his head loll back and laughed for one short, sharp moment. And then he pressed forward and shoved his mouth against Phil’s, kissing him hard and clumsy as his orgasm finally rolled over him and he pulsed hot and heavy out over Phil’s hand. Phil stroked him through it, stroked him right to the point where Clint was so sensitive that he was gasping and twitching, and then he pulled out a clean handkerchief.

Sitwell’s voice came over the comm again. “I don’t care what you’re up to or how many people you’re doing it with. Captain Rogers will be at your position in seven minutes, so make sure you have some damn pants on.”

Clint was still breathing heavily, was still thrumming and lazy from his climax, but he managed to reply with an “Aye aye, sir,” and then pulled the buzzcomm from his ear. “You’re incredible,” he said to Phil as he slumped against him. “And a little evil.”

“It was your idea,” Phil returned, a hand at the back of Clint’s neck, fingers stroking through his hair. “I was just following orders.”

“Mm, then your commander is clearly a most fiendish fiend. And devilishly handsome, no doubt.”

“Increidibly handsome,” Phil agreed as he pressed a kiss to Clint’s temple. “Impossibly sexy. It’s actually a little distracting.”

“I can’t stay,” Clint said, because that seemed like something he should come clean about. They were down to about five minutes.

“I know,” Phil replied. “It’s okay.”

“That’s not the word I would use,” Clint replied. He tucked himself back into his pants and then let his gaze wander over Phil’s body. Phil who was still hard. Phil who looked like he was barely resisting the temptation to drag Clint into the bedroom and do wonderful, sexy, sweaty things to him all night long.

“Are you going to be okay?” Phil asked. “They’re not dragging you away from bed rest too soon?”

“Mm, don’t think I’d be getting much rest if we were in bed right now, but I’m game to try it,” Clint replied with a leer. When he saw that Phil was genuinely concerned, he gave him a comforting smile. “They just need my eyes,” he assured Phil. “I won’t be anywhere near the conflict.”

Phil paused in re-fastenging Clint’s belt, and gave him an appreciative look that was definitely a tease. “I don’t suppose that means you can do your job from here, like this?”

“Ah, no. But it’s tempting to try.” He pulled Phil close for another kiss, short and chaste because he didn’t trust himself to be able to leave if he let it be any deeper. “It’s nice to know that you’re getting as frustrated about this as me. Very flattering.”

“If I had my way,” Phil said, their faces still close enough for their lips to brush when he spoke, “you’d be stripped naked and on your knees right now.”

Clint’s breath hitched. “Fuck,” he said, and he pressed his face against Phil’s shoulder for a moment, inhaled a long and shuddery breath that smelled like Phil. “For future reference,” he said as he eased away, “I’d be okay with that.” Phil nipped at Clint’s neck and Clint groaned and tipped his head back, inviting more bites. Phil gave the stretch of skin an open-mouthed kiss, and then sucked sharply at the wet stretch. He dragged his teeth over the faint bruise he had made and Clint shivered. He wanted to be naked. He wanted to be very, very naked with Phil, and as far as Clint was concerned the rest of the world could damn well —

“Did you have somewhere to be?” Phil asked, still pressing Clint against the wall, running his nose back and forth along Clint’s neck as though he were trying to find the perfect place to next lay his attentions.

“Yeah,” Clint replied, putting a coaxing hand at the back of Phil’s neck without shame. “Your bed.”

Phil huffed a laugh against Clint’s skin, and gave him a playful bite. “Come on,” he said, backing off and tugging Clint away from the wall. “You need to go save the world.”

“World-saving is a team effort,” Clint replied as Phil stepped down the hall to retrieve Clint’s jacket. “I only save one fifth of it, at most.”

“Aren’t there six Avengers?” Phil asked.

“Yeah, but someone is usually slacking off,” Clint grumbled. Phil pushed him out the door without allowing a kiss goodbye, which was probably a good thing because there was a jet hovering above the roof of Phil’s building and Clint knew that Agent Rambeau was not above sending someone down to haul him out by the back of his pants.

Clint had caught sight of his reflection in the little window of the door to the roof. He’d left his tie in Phil’s apartment. He had a dark love bite low on his neck that could probably be covered if he buttoned up the collar of his shirt, and a lighter one a little higher up that had been Phil’s parting gift. He allowed himself a pleased smile at the sight of them. The shirt was twisted and rumpled, and a quick glance down confirmed that the state of his pants was quite indecent. Clint could have made himself presentable in the back of the jet but he chose not to. If SHIELD was going to compromise his sex life, SHIELD was going to have to live with the consequences.

Which was a fine attitude in theory, but the reality was that Clint had been picked up from his date by a clearly mortified Captain America, who had taken one look at Clint and then firmly fixed his attention on the controls in front of him. They couldn’t have sent ‘Tasha, who would have merely scolded Clint for making the cockpit smell like sex. Or Sitwell, who would have shaken his head as he collected Clint but would have apologised for calling him in by the end of the trip. No. They’d sent Steve. There was just something about making Captain America embarrassed that was a complete blow to the self-esteem. It were as though his dick had compromised the security of the nation.

“So,” Clint said as be buckled himself in. “How about we agree to never talk about this again?” 

Steve nodded stiffly in agreement, and then they shot out towards the bay.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint had high hopes for Friday. Taking down the swarm of what seemed to be some kind of hateful flying rat had taken most of the night, but it hadn’t even been close to the most awful mission Clint had been given. He’d leaned out of the jet at one point to add some exploding arrows to the fray, and had been repaid for his efforts with some rat-related shrapnel cutting open his shoulder. He had stuck around after they had landed and gotten it cleaned, ignoring the strange look Natasha gave him for talking to medical staff and the disappointed look Tony gave him for having turned up at all. He had even asked for a note from the doctor on duty, giving him the all clear when it came to being infected with things. 

Clint had been pulled away from a date by an Avengers mission, and it hadn’t left him completely incapacitated or removed from the country for a week. It was a good sign. And, even better, Phil had weekends off. That was apparently the benefit of working conventional hours – and while Phil usually kept himself pretty busy on weekends, Clint was positive they’d be able to find some time together. He owed Phil an orgasm and he was damn well going to deliver on that as soon as possible.

**Free tonight?** he had texted when he had returned to the Tower after the mission, around the same time that Phil would be getting up. Phil had replied that he would be and Clint had collapsed into his bed with a smile on his face.

Being awake for twenty-four hours meant that he slept through until late afternoon. He showered quickly, threw on a pair of nice underpants and thoroughly worn everything else, and then nearly crashed into Natasha as he tried to get into the lift just as she was stepping out.

“Clint, wait,” she said, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket. “I have some news.”

Clint rose up onto the balls of his feet and then dropped back down. “Is it _the_ most important news you will ever give me?”

Natasha stared at him for a moment, considering the question. “Probably not,” she conceded.

“Then it can wait,” Clint assured her. 

He was fairly certain that she muttered something along the lines of _Lovesick dumbass_ as he disentangled himself and gently pushed her out of the lift, but he paid her sour mood no attention. It was Friday night. It was the start of the weekend. It was the start of potentially two whole days and four nights with Phil. And while Clint was looking forward to hanging out and eating food and drinking coffee and just being around Phil, he also wasn’t going to lie to himself. He was pretty confident that they would have sex. Given the sheer amount of time that they could spend together over the next sixty hours, it seemed almost inevitable. And if they could manage to have sex once, then that just opened up the tantalising possibility of having sex _more than once_. It was hard for him to keep the smile off his face.

Clint had high hopes and a very basic kind of need motivating him to get to Phil’s apartment as quickly as possible, and he grinned to himself as he cut through the late afternoon traffic and scared the odd pedestrian.

He jogged up the flights of stairs to get to Phil’s floor and knocked on his door with a jaunty rat-a-tat-tat. He heard Phil call out a muffled invitation from deep inside his apartment, and Clint headed inside. Phil was in the bedroom talking on his mobile phone and, to Clint’s confusion, packing.

“Uh,” Clint said, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

Phil did not look especially pleased as he ended the call with “I understand, thank you,” and then dropped his phone on the bed. “I’m sorry,” Phil said as he folded a shirt and set it neatly in an overnight bag. “I tried to call you.”

Clint frowned and pulled his phone out of his pocket. The screen was blank, and stayed blank no matter how hard he poked at it. “I think it’s broken,” he said.

Phil gently pulled the phone from Clint’s hand and gave it a cursory look. “It needs charging,” he explained, handing it back.

“Oh, yeah,” Clint said. Clint had never charged it. He could only assume that he had the dock for it. “They do need that. So… family emergency or fleeing the country?” he asked.

“Neither,” Phil replied. “Conference.”

Clint wasn’t entirely sure how conferences worked, having never been to one himself, but it seemed strange that Phil wouldn’t have thought to mention it the previous day. “Surprise conference?” he asked after some thought, because it seemed more polite than asking why he had only just found out about it.

“For me, yes,” Phil replied, frowning as he packed socks and underpants. “A friend was going but she’s in the early-ish stages of her pregnancy and doesn’t want to mix morning sickness with travel, so she offered me her registration slot. I wasn’t going to go because I couldn’t afford the flights but then it turns out that her partner is a travel agent so he was able to transfer the flights and…” Phil trailed off, frowned at his bag, and started unpacking it. 

“Well, that’s great,” Clint said. He sat down on the edge of Phil’s bed where it seemed like he would be mostly out of the way. “What kind of conference is it?”

“Education,” Phil replied as he started repacking his bag, this time starting with the socks and then working his way up to larger items of clothing. “There’s a seminar I really want to go to on teaching difficult histories, then the usual seminars about motivating students and the pros and cons of structuring secondary school to lead into tertiary education, but there’s often something new in those so they’re worth going to.”

“Neat,” Clint said. While he was sure that he would fall asleep at any of the talks that Phil had listed, Phil seemed to brighten up as he thought of the conference ahead. “How long will you be away?” he asked.

“From tonight until Sunday afternoon.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil said again, giving Clint a sympathetic look before he stepped into his bathroom and started collecting up toiletries. “If it was one of the conferences I usually go to I’d just blow it off for the year, but...”

“No, it’s fine. Really,” Clint said as he flopped across Phil’s bed. “You’re awesome at your job so, good. It’s great that you get to go. Can I help? Do you need a lift to the airport?”

“I’ve already booked a taxi,” Phil replied as he came back into his bedroom with a neatly packed toiletry bag. “Actually, could you take over trying to find a cattery that’ll answer their phone?”

“Sure,” Clint said, reaching for Phil’s phone. “What do you need a cattery for?”

“Mittens,” Phil replied. “Normally Nina would take her, but she finally got her landlord to evict the small dog her neighbour was keeping, and now the whole building is snitching on one another when it comes to pets. I don’t want her to get turned in to animal control. And then Gregory is usually my backup, but he’s a little nervous around cats since the incident and I don’t think he’d ever forgive me if Mittens tried to hunt him.” Phil frowned down at his bag and started pulling things out of it again. He was clearly vexed, and Clint was very invested in wiping the frown away from Phil’s face.

“I can look after her,” Clint offered. Phil paused in his re-packing and gave Clint a skeptical look. “I’ve looked after lions, remember?” Clint returned. At the very least, he had been present while other people looked after lions. “I’m sure a housecat won’t be that hard. Put out food, clean up poop, right?”

“Don’t let out,” Phil added. “Are you sure you’ll have the time to drop by?”

“Of course,” Clint replied. He was still on medical leave, and was usually bored out of his mind. If he was called in for anything big he could always send a junior agent to pour out some more kibble. “It’ll give the two of us a chance to bond,” he added. 

“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Phil said, giving Clint the chance to change his mind.

Clint opened his mouth to assure Phil that he had been planning on spending most of the weekend in Phil’s apartment anyway, and caught the words just in time. “I’ll be happy to have something to do,” he said instead. 

“Okay,” Phil said at last. He fit the last piece of clothing into his bag and gave it a long, hard look before finally zipping it closed. “Come on,” he said, holding a hand out to Clint and tugging him up off the bed. “I’ll show you the ropes of housecat care.”

“I got really excited when you mentioned ropes,” Clint admitted. Phil snorted, and steered him out of the bedroom.

~*~

Clint woke up in Phil’s bed and stretched across the mattress. None of his teammates had expected him home the previous night, and Phil had given him a spare key. Phil had cable that fit Clint’s phone and had set it up to charge before leaving. Clint had sent Phil a text letting him know that he was taking advantage of his bed, and Phil had eventually replied with a photo of his own bed at the hotel and a frowny face.

Clint stared up at Phil’s ceiling and tried to get his day in order. He needed to feed Mittens. He needed to feed himself. He should probably figure out where Mittens was hiding and confirm her continued existence. He rolled out of bed and padded into Phil’s kitchen. Clint had a deep appreciation for Phil’s coffee maker, because it was a little of the old side and Clint had no trouble figuring out how to use it. At the Tower he usually waited for someone else to take on the cutting edge technology and then mooched off them. 

Nothing in Phil’s apartment was cutting edge. His television predated flat-screens and his DVD player still had a VHS component. The only sound system in the apartment was attached to the entertainment centre and boasted a five-stack CD player. Given that Clint sometimes felt like the only person in the world who didn’t own an mp3 player, he liked the dated familiarity of Phil’s things. Even Phil’s couch, though clean and largely free of cat-related destruction, was worn around the edges. 

Clint helped himself to cereal from Phil’s cupboard while the coffee brewed. He was pleased to discover that Phil both bought cocoa puffs, and that he had sat down at some point in the past and completed the word find on the back of the box. A call came through as Clint was finishing his cereal, and Clint had to dart back into the bedroom to get to his phone in time.

“Bruce wants to know if you’re free today,” Natasha said by way of greeting.

“I guess,” Clint replied. “Why?”

There were the sounds of Natasha passing her phone over, and Bruce sounded sheepish when he came on the line. “It’s nothing, really,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“I’m free,” Clint replied as he walked back to the bedroom with the intention to collect his clothes. Mittens wasn’t on the bed. She hadn’t been in the kitchen or the little living area. Clint frowned. “Hey Bruce, you know anything about cats?”

“Cats?” Bruce repeated, clearly confused.

“Yeah,” Clint said, crouching down and peering under the bed. “House cats. If you were a cat, where would you hide?”

“Uh, hmm,” Bruce seemed to give the question careful consideration, and Clint checked inside Phil’s wardrobe as he pondered it over. “Under things,” Bruce said at last. “Inside things. Boxes, cupboards. Behind things, like televisions or appliances. Anything pushed into a corner at an angle so there’s a triangle of space behind it.”

Clint padded out to the living area and peered behind the television. Most of Phil’s furniture and appliances were pressed right up against the walls, and none of them had little cavities underneath that Mittens could crawl into. “Nope,” Clint said. “Not looking- Ah,” he said, cutting himself off.

“Ah?” Bruce repeated.

“Shh,” Clint returned, stepping across the room carefully in his bare feet. He could see the edge of a shape at the top of Phil’s bookcase and he was very certain it hadn’t been there yesterday. Closer, closer. The changing angle of his perspective meant that he lost sight of the little lump, and he kept a careful ear out for sounds of movement. He pressed himself against the wall beside the bookcase, slowly exhaled a silent breath, and then acted. 

He jumped up, slapping a hand down on the top o the bookcase, and cried, “ _Gotcha!_ ”

On the one hand, Clint had indeed found Mittens. On the other hand, he had possibly not thought the scenario through to its logical conclusion. While Clint had unparalleled vision, Mittens moved so fast that it was hard to track her. He thought that she might have ricocheted off the ceiling. Whatever her initial launch pattern, she used his face as a springboard and then shot across the apartment with much scrabbling of claws on floorboards. Clint was left flat on his back, with claw marks in his scalp and a significant bruise to his ego.

When Clint finally stopped cursing, he heard Bruce laughing at him over the phone. “Shut up,” he said, picking his phone up off the floor. 

“You have a gift with animals,” Bruce commented.

“Shut up,” Clint said again, because he felt that it communicated everything the situation needed. “What did you want anyway?”

“There’s a SHIELD seminar being run today. I thought if you were free for a few hours we could tick it off our list.”

“Yeah, sure, I guess,” Clint said as he clambered to his feet. He wandered into Phil’s bedroom to finish retrieving his clothes, and a low rumbling growl came from under Phil’s bed. Clint ignored it. “Anything good?” he asked.

There was an amused curl in Bruce’s voice when he replied. “Fire safety.”

~*~

They nearly weren’t allowed to attend the seminar. Clint had half-assumed that the two of them being barred from SHIELD sites without an escort was just an empty threat, but no. The security card scanner lit up with a red light when Clint pressed his SHIELD ID against it, and he and Bruce had to stand there awkwardly as the lobby security tried to track down a line manager to authorise their admission. They received more than a few amused glances, and while Bruce looked sheepish and just smiled with an awkward cringe through the whole scenario, Clint didn’t bother keeping the scowl off his face. Clint had level-5b clearance and he couldn’t duck into a SHIELD building to use the bathroom without someone watching over his shoulder.

He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or exasperated when Sitwell finally came down to fetch them. “You’re lucky I’m generous,” Sitwell said without preamble as he swiped them in. “Rambeau would have left you here for hours.”

“Rambeau loves me,” Clint returned, and Sitwell snorted.

“Can we move this along?” Bruce asked. “I had to RSVP to this.” Sitwell stared at Bruce in surprise for a moment, and Bruce stared back with expectant patience. 

They were escorted to the lecture theatre and Sitwell left them at the door. “I’m sure you’re both smart enough to know that any more hijinks from either of you will not be well-received,” he said sternly.

“Why was that comment directed at me?” Clint asked, placing a hand to his heart. “I am practically the best behaved person on this team.”

Sitwell huffed. “That’s not saying much. Get inside and learn about fire extinguishers or something.”

~*~

“They were looking at us like we’re the naughty kids at the back of the class,” Clint complained when they left the seminar, late in the afternoon. SHIELD seminars had a tendency to run overtime, because there was nothing quite like a room full of agents who got a hard-on for details when it came to dragging out the question and answer component. Clint putting his hand up and asking for the SHIELD approved method for _starting_ fires hadn’t exactly sped things along. They always tried to skip over the fun bits.

“We set fire to a research facility,” Bruce replied with a small smile. “We _are_ the naughty kids.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “We did save the world a couple of times,” he pointed out. Surely that was worth taking into consideration.

Bruce nodded in agreement. “And then we set some horses on fire.”

“Setting a horse on fire is nowhere near the worst thing I’ve done,” Clint replied. A few nearby agents turned around to stare at him. He stared back and raised his eyebrows, and they looked away. The horses were actually in better condition after the fire than they had been before it. It was possibly the only time that setting an animal on fire could be considered an act of kindness.

They had been further held up when it came to signing the completion list by the door, because Bruce could remember his SHIELD consultant number but not his payroll number. Clint had been sure that they would be stuck there for hours arguing over it, with occasional breaks to argue about who exactly was responsible for calling Bruce’s line manager for that information, whether it was the line manager’s job to find that information, and who exactly Bruce’s line manager was anyway. He had been pleasantly surprised. 

Bruce apparently found dealing with bureaucracy quite stressful. Bruce had just needed to say “This is all very annoying,” in an exasperated tone and every SHIELD agent around him had taken a big step back. There had been a timid suggestion that maybe Bruce would like to head to the basement to sit quietly while other people chased down his payroll number, but Clint had firmly stepped on that idea and assured everyone that Bruce merely needed some air. They had both managed to keep the smiles off their faces until they were safely outside.

The streets surrounding the SHIELD headquarters were possibly the safest in New York, but Clint still cast his eye carefully over the windows of the coffee shops, bakeries, and newsagencies that surrounded it. Sitting in a dimly lit lecture theatre for the best part of the day had left him feeling prickly and unfocussed. He looked around for any external cause of his unease – someone who had been sitting by a window since they had entered the building, a civilian who glanced over at them too often. Nothing jumped out at him.

Probably it was a mix of disappointment that Phil was out of town, and annoyance that he still had to fill out an online comprehension test about the safest methods for putting out a fire started by an alien or magical device. 

“Do you have any plans?” Bruce asked.

“No,” Clint replied. “I should probably go and apologise to a cat,” he added as an afterthought, “but nothing major.”

“Steve’s cooking tonight. He’s going to teach Thor how to roast a chicken.”

“Tony’s letting them in his kitchen again?”

“Tony’s out of town. Something in Miami needed his attention.”

“Ah, so that’s why you were bored and lonely today.”

“I’m never bored,” Bruce replied. He was aiming to sound aloof in his delivery, but Bruce always seemed so quietly pleased to be having a social conversation that it came across as amused and affectionate. Bruce was a very good actor when he needed to be and he was unparalleled when it came to dry sarcasm, but Clint had seen him pause every now and then during non-hero time and just look so surprised and amazed at how drastically his life had changed since joining the Avengers.

Clint’s life had certainly changed. He had gone from getting dropped around the country at a moment’s notice and living out of a duffel bag, to having his own permanent SHIELD lodgings and more space than he knew what to do with at the Tower. He had gone from someone who was used when SHIELD wanted a trigger to be pulled, to someone who was needed when a situation demanded a certain perspective, when it required the right shot and not just an efficient one.

Clint had also stopped sleeping around about the time he’d been pulled into the awkward group hug that was the Avengers Initiative. Partly because he was tumbling with a different crowd, one filled with people who tried not to think of their lives as a series of final moments. Partly because he was usually too busy to go out looking for it. Mostly because he had gotten tired of sweaty fucking in dark places and hadn’t fought the excuse to walk away from that. And then something wonderful and a little bit badass had practically fallen into his lap.

Clint would not be opposed to having Phil quite literally on his lap. Phil was smart and sexy and confident, and had a way of getting Clint off that left him feeling scorched inside. He also hadn’t thrown his hands up in disgust at their rather cluttered schedules. If Clint had to sit Phil down and block out some sext time in advance, he would damn well do it. Maybe they could block out a whole week, minimum. Given the heat in Phil’s eyes and the increasing number of surfaces Clint wanted to have sex on or against, he was pretty sure that he’d be able to negotiate some kind of compromise.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Bruce asked, nudging Clint with his shoulder as they ambled along.

Clint pulled himself out of his musings. “I was thinking that I could eat some chicken.”

~*~

Dinner at the Tower had been slightly more awkward than Clint had expected. Of course, that could have been because Steve kept opening his mouth and then pausing. Clint was willing to bet that Steve had decided that they should have some kind of friendly chat about things peripheral to Clint’s attempts at a sex life, and then kept blanking on actual words to say. It didn’t help that Steve had kept his agreement to never mention the incident again, because Natasha and Thor had picked up almost instantly that there was weirdness between them for an unknown reason, so Clint had to deal with curious looks as well as Steve’s awkwardness.

Bruce, in contrast, had rolled his eyes at them and then flopped down on the couch to ‘do science’. Clint was pretty certain he was playing Tertris on his tablet.

“How was school today, kids?” Natasha asked, looping her arm around Clint’s neck.

“They didn’t let us set anything on fire,” Clint complained. “How are we meant to show that we can be safe around fire if there is no fire?”

“Aw,” Natasha said, pressing kiss to Clint’s temple. “What meanies.”

“Exactly.”

“It is a fair question,” Thor called from the kitchen. “How can your agents show that they can be trusted with responsibility if they are not first trusted to be responsible?”

“That would be an excellent point,” Natasha returned, “if it weren’t for the fact that Clint once attacked a guy with a squirrel.”

“Or the fact that Natasha steals shit _all the time_ ,” Clint countered.

“Hey Thor, didn’t you once start a war that nearly wiped out a whole race?” Bruce called from the couch.

“You drink the last of the milk and then do not appraise others of the need for more,” Thor returned with a grin.

At last, they all let their eyes rest on Steve, who shifted uncomfortably. “Look, I think that the important thing is-”

“Out with it, Cap,” Natasha said sharply.

Steve slumped, his head lolling back on his shoulders as he stared up at the ceiling in exasperation. Every now and then Steve did something that let everyone know that he was basically still in his twenties, and Clint would always be amused by the sudden shift from Captain to annoyed kid. Steve sighed, and then flopped his head forwards so he was looking down at his feet. “I cheat at cards,” he mumbled.

Everyone made a big ruckus about being outraged, complete with Natasha demanding a demonstration and Bruce lobbing a pack of cards at Steve’s head, but Clint suspected that none of them were especially surprised. Steve was a good actor, and it was only when he had to address a situation a plain old Steve Rogers that he floundered. 

They spent the evening eating a pretty damn good medley of roast chicken and vegetables, and being subtly fleeced by Steve. Then Natasha stepped up her game and started cheating too, and Clint wasn’t going to be left out of that fun. Clint suspected that Bruce would have bowed out long ago if they’d been playing for money, but instead they were using Tony’s possessions. Clint had lost two jets and some kind of designer car to Steve, but he thought he had a chance of winning the house in Malibu off Natasha if she kept her sights focussed on taking down the captain.

“You can’t tell Tony about this,” Steve said seriously. “He’d never let me live it down.”

“He would also stop playing such games with you,” Thor commented.

Steve shrugged one broad shoulder. “It’s not my fault he thinks I’ve got beginner’s luck.”

“Really?” Bruce asked. “Because I swear the last time you two played blackjack you put on your cute little innocent face and _swore_ that it must be-”

“Okay, fine,” Steve said, giving Bruce a sharp look. “Then it’s not my fault that he _believed_ me.”

“Stark is amazingly trusting for a paranoid asshole,” Natasha commented as she rearranged her cards. They all considered her assessment for a moment, and then nodded in agreement. With a full stomach and stretched out along a couch that was probably worth more than some of the places Clint had lived it, it was easy to agree that Tony Stark was a pretty alright guy once you got past his attitude. And his personality. And his general aura of smarm. Then Clint caught sight of the blue glow of Jarvis.

“Yeah,” Clint said as he sank back into the couch. “All that trust almost makes up for the way he combs through every room of his tower when we’re not around.”

There was a long pause as they all considered the possibility, eventually broken by Jarvis. “If I may interject, sirs and madam, I can assure you that there is no panty raid scheduled until next week.”

It broke the tension, and Steve flicked some of his cards at Jarvis’ screen. Everyone had expected Steve to be jumpy around all of the fancy-pants new technology, but he and Jarvis got along quite well. Clint was never going to get used to a disembodied voice asking him in the middle of the night while he was raiding the fridge if he was “intending on using a plate, sir?” But Steve seemed reluctant to waste any of his teammates’ time with his culture-shock, and Jarvis was always ready and willing to be of assistance. Clint wondered what would happen if Tony started to suspect that Jarvis liked Steve more.

Clint eventually lost Tony’s bots and his buyout of Hammer Industries to Thor, who looked quite pleased to have mechanical brothers in arms to join him on future quests across the realms. He hauled himself up off the couch and collected together the plates and cutlery that has been sitting on the floor for the past hour. He had to admit, Steve and Thor (under the stern supervision of Jarvis) had cooked a good chicken. He left the plates in the kitchen for other people to deal with, and then headed to his room to grab some clean clothes. 

Skipping out on the fun was such a familiar action that it had become habit. While SHIELD was full of people who were willing to stay on the train while it was heading somewhere good, but Clint was always wary of pushing his luck. Part of his desperation to be with Phil stemmed from the awareness that he had no idea how long their relationship would last. Tying up too much of himself with the Avengers would only fuck him up all the more when that arrangement stopped working. While he didn’t have his quarters at SHIELD to retire to, he did have permission to crash at Phil’s apartment and Clint wasn’t going to resist the temptation.

Natasha caught up with him as he was sneaking out through the lobby.

“Hey,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Wow, hey,” Clint replied, giving her his most charming grin. “What a night, right? All of that team bonding and shit? So much fun. Wow, yeah. We should really do this more often. Maybe when Tony’s in town. Don’t want to bond too much without him, right? Team dynamics and all that crap. Oh shit, is that the time?”

“Clint,” Natasha said with an exasperated sigh, and Clint reluctantly stayed where he was. “It’s not like he’s even in town.”

“I’m looking after his cat,” Clint protested. “I’m taking it chicken. Cats like chicken.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you know that from cartoons?” she asked flatly.

“And commercials. Come on, can you really live with a cat going hungry on your conscience?” he asked, knowing full well that she could. He followed up with his best puppy-dog eyes, and Natasha rolled her eyes at him.

“Fine. But before you go, I really need to-” Clint was saved by his mobile vibrating, and the struggle of getting it out of his pants. Clint’s phone had assigned the last picture Phil had sent him as Phil’s contact photo, so Clint was treated to a picture of Mitten’s curled up against Phil’s neck and pressing his head at a strange angle. Clint had asked if he was going to get any sexy photos in the near future, and Phil had e-mailed him a pdf of an information sheet aimed at teens about the risks of taking and distributing saucy selfies. Phil was apparently leading by example when it came to digital modesty.

“Hey,” Clint said brightly as he answered the call. Natasha snorted in disgust and headed back to the fun in the recreation area, knowing that Clint was a lost cause.

~*~

Phil had apparently been having fun getting into arguments with people all day at the convention, and Clint happily listened to Phil chatter in his helmet as he rode back to Phil’s apartment building.

“It got awkward over dinner when people started talking about how hard it is to stretch their budget to maintaining the school swimming centre _and_ the school football field, while at the same time trying to keep the cost down on their new three court gymnasium.”

“Does Crosstown High even have a football field?” Clint asked.

“We barely have football uniforms,” Phil replied in a hushed voice. “The money some of these schools have is unbelievable.”

“Try not to give into the temptation to mug them all at the closing ceremony,” Clint said. “Crime doesn’t pay.”

“What about if I put the money to good use? Like taking a month-long sabbatical to Paris and dragging you along with me?”

“You wouldn’t have to drag me,” Clint replied. “You ever been to Paris?”

“No,” Phil replied. “Outside of my Navy days, I’ve only done the odd trip into Canada.”

“More conferences?”

“Ice fishing.”

“Of course,” Clint replied. “Why else would anyone go to Canada?”

“I also saw some of the filming locations for _The X-Files_.”

“That’s a documentary, right?” Clint asked. The long pause he got in response let him know that he’d guessed wrong. “In my defence,” he said as he parked behind Phil’s building, “I didn’t watch a lot of TV as a kid.”

“I’ll catch you up some time,” Phil promised him. “I’ve got to go. I need to be up early to argue with people some more.”

“Try not to make anyone cry,” Clint replied. “Sweet dreams and stuff.”

“Love you,” Phil replied, and then he hung up.

Clint stood in the shadow of the building for a long moment, the sappy grin on his face masked by his helmet.

~*~

Clint woke up the next morning, spread out face-down on Phil’s bed. The bed was slightly less enjoyable without Phil in it, but the mattress was springy with a slightly worn-in feel to it and the sheets always smelled warm and clean. Clint had tried to mend some bridges with Mittens the Second, and had spent several hours sitting on the floor of the living room, waiting for Mittens to come out from underneath the entertainment system and eat the damn chicken he’d brought her. It was a battle of wills and patience, and Clint had given up when he realised that Mittens was ignoring him so thoroughly that she had fallen into a light sleep.

The failed battle of wills had also given Clint the opportunity to just be in Phil’s apartment. To get used to the sounds of the building and the little elements of normal life. And if he had inspected the questionable paint job in a few corners of the ceiling before he went to bed, well. 

Clint slept late, and felt wonderful for having done so. In a perfect world Phil would be in the kitchen making coffee, and sex would be in Clint’s near future. And maybe pancakes. Clint would have to explore the domesticity thing. He’d never done it before, and Phil seemed like someone who had his head around keeping the bathroom clean and remembering to buy milk. 

Clint was pulled from his thoughts by his phone vibrating on the bedside table. He glanced at the screen and saw that it was Tony calling. Tony had either set his own contact image, or had the same photo saved onto every Stark phone ever. It was an exaggerated smoulder, and never failed to make Clint roll his eyes. Clint dropped the phone onto the mattress with every intention of ignoring the call, and jumped when Tony wished him a good early-afternoon. He sat up in bed and regarded the phone suspiciously before picking it up.

“Hello?”

“Up and out of the nest, pretty bird,” Tony said brightly. 

Clint frowned. “Did you just remotely answer my phone?”

“You weren’t picking up.”

“Because I’m busy,” Clint replied irritably.

“Doing what? Principal Hottie is out of town.”

“How do you know that? Are you stalking my boyfriend?”

“I saw him at the airport on Friday.”

“Since when do you fly out of the airport?”Clint asked.

“Since I started stalking your boyfriend,” Tony shot back. “I just got back and we’re going out for burgers if Thor ever gets out of the shower. It’ll probably be an early dinner instead of a late lunch. You in?”

Clint scrunched up his nose. Tony had a taste for cheap and oily food that came in far greater volumes than one man could eat. He and Clint had that much in common, and Clint just couldn’t find it in himself to turn down the offer. “Fine.”

“I’ll get Jarvis to text you the address,” because of course running everything through an AI was easier to Tony Stark than talking to people. “And when are you going to introduce me to your man, anyway?”

“Ugh,” Clint said, and hung up.

He took the time to shower, making use of Phil’s soap and enjoying the smell of it, the memories of the time Phil had washed him down and taken such good care of him. He changed into clean jeans and yesterday’s shirt, drank the last of the coffee that he had made the previous day, and ate a handful of dry cereal without getting too much of it on the floor. He’d have to clean the coffee pot after lunch. And make the bed. He considered changing the sheets, and then realised that he had no idea where Phil kept the clean sheets. Probably in the closet, but Clint didn’t want to go snooping. It was pretty hard to go through someone’s closed and cupboards without snooping. What if he saw something really personal or private in the process? What if he found Phil’s porn? Did Phil even have porn? Clint cast his eye around Phil’s apartment, looking for potential hiding places. The drawers and cupboards of his entertainment cabinet, secreted in his bookcase and masquerading as real books and family movies. The apartment wasn’t that big, maybe Phil had to hide his porn in one of the kitchen drawers? 

Clint dragged his thoughts away from the matter. He would not go snooping through Phil’s things for porn, or photos and related incriminating documents, or even sheets. Clint called out a goodbye to Mittens, heard the cat scuttle from the living area into Phil’s bedroom, and locked up the apartment. There was a knot of people talking loudly and looking irate in the cramped foyer, and Clint managed to pick one of Phil’s neighbours out of the cluster.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

The lady, who was about two feet shorter than Clint and always seemed to be glaring, scowled up at him before shaking her head and redirecting the look at the crowd. “Gas smell again,” she replied. “Landlord wants to kill us.”

Clint frowned. “Is the leak bad?”

“Gas leak always bad,” the lady said flatly, and Clint had to nod in agreement. Generally speaking, the uncontrolled spread of gas was not a good thing.

“You think Phil’s cat will be alright?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if a cat would be more susceptible to asphyxia from natural gas than a human. Probably, but natural gas rose and cats were shorter than humans. Clint was so busy thinking that he nearly missed the reply, and was given a stern poke in the stomach for his inattention.

“Who knows?” the lady said, gesturing dismissively with one hand. “Maybe we imagine gas. Maybe we all die in our sleep.” She gripped Clint by the elbow and shook his arm ruefully. “Cats take care of cats.”

“Right,” Clint said. “Thanks.” He disengaged himself and made a speedy exit, wrangling his phone out of his pocket as he went. **Your neighbours are fucking weird** he sent to Phil.

Phil replied a few seconds later. **Don’t make eye contact.** Clint shook his head as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. It seemed like good advice.

Clint set his helmet on the seat of his bike while he set about zipping his jacket up. He noticed a patch empty of light where sunlight was catching on glass up and to his left, caught the suggestion of movement in that darkened space and instinctively dropped and rolled just before he heard a single shot ring out. He hid behind the nearest car because the parking lot was a flat and empty space with no real cover. It was highly unlikely that the car would stop a bullet from a rifle with any real power behind it, but it at least kept him from view. He cursed himself for getting caught off guard. He had a small knife in each of his boots, but they would not be much help in a long-distance standoff. His nearest weapons cache was at SHIELD HQ, and that was not even approaching close. 

If he was lucky, the shooter would be a bad shot. A lot of rookies thought they could get a great gun and a good sight and they’d automatically be a crack shot. The reality was that if they didn’t know their weapon and they weren’t experienced at tracking a moving target through a sight, they weren’t too hard to slip away from. Clint spotted an empty chip packet and, being careful to keep low, poked it up over the hood of the car and waved it back and forth. A bullet ripped through it, silent this time, and then embedded itself somewhere in the next car along. The target had been hit right in the centre. Clint frowned. It would have been nice to be lucky for once.

If a sniper had wanted him dead, the chip packet would have revealed enough of his position for the shooter to blast through the car and take him out. Clint’s various handlers were often frustrated with his refusal to do just that – Clint preferred to take one shot instead of five or six, preferred to be able to see for himself that the target had been taken out without having to change position for a visual confirm. So either he was up against someone who didn’t want to kill him, or someone who would take personal pride in killing him.

Clint pulled out his phone and called Natasha. The call went straight to voicemail, and Clint cursed loudly before switching to his pleasant phone voice. “Hey ‘Tasha,” he said once he had been given the beep to record his message. “I’m kind of getting shot at right now. Call me back when you can. Bye!”

Another bullet cut through the car, leaving neat little holes in the windows. His assailant was getting bored. The bike would take too long to start, and the helmet was designed to keep his brain inside his head rather than keeping bullets out. He just needed to get to the edge of the parking lot, then he’d be able to duck around the side of the building, get some shelter, and then find the asshole who was shooting at him from two buildings away.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself as he took stock of his surroundings. No great ideas sprang to mind, so Clint went with a bad one that had some personality to it. He ripped a hubcap off the wheel nearest to him and weighed it up in his hands. With a second one tucked under his arm, he stood up from behind the car and tossed a hubcap through the air, discus-style. He had aimed high and thrown hard, and the shooter picked it out of the air like it was a particularly uncoordinated clay pigeon. The shot gave Clint enough information for his next throw, and he tossed the second hubcap with all his might towards the row of windows the shooter was set behind. 

Hubcaps weren’t meant to travel any great distance in that manner, and Clint would have been surprised if it had even reached the building it had been aimed at, let alone one of the high windows. But it was the best distraction he had at hand, and Clint launched himself out from behind the car and darted across the open space towards the next piece of cover. 

He tried to skid to a halt by a dumpster and his feet slid out from under him, leading to a graceless scramble to get behind the metal side as soon as possible. A bullet hit the ground just next to where his hip had been. He tumbled up off the ground and another bullet hit the asphalt by his feet just before he managed to get himself out of sight. It took a lot of skill to miss someone with such precision. The shooter was playing with him. 

Clint had played the game a lot when he was younger, when he flashier and dumber than he had any right to be. An arrow thudding into the ground by Barney’s feet, into the caravan just behind him. A stupid game that could have gone very wrong, but Clint had been so confident that his aim would be true. He still played it years later, though it had stopped being a slice of fun and had been folded into his arsenal with all of his other weapons. It was a game that all snipers played. Sometimes he just needed to see his target sweat. If he was taking out another marksman, it was a matter of respect. A way of saying _This is how good I am; don’t be afraid_. Often people who knew they were going to die would stop still, would close their eyes and exhale and it would be a cleaner shot than Clint would ever hope for. 

He was pretty sure that his shooter wasn’t trying to kill him, but the persistence of the shots let him know that it wasn’t exactly a childish prank either.

He sent a text to Phil. **Is there any chance you own a gun** He held his phone in his hand, scrunched up small and hopefully with enough layers of dumpster between him and the shooter to keep himself safe. Phil had a deep and profound bond with his mobile phone, and could usually be relied upon to reply instantly. Minutes ticked by without a word being sent back. Clint checked his watch and cursed – Phil’s plane was already in the air, and as a polite and responsible citizen he would have turned it off. 

Clint didn’t want to call in the cavalry because Phil’s neighbourhood already looked battered around the edges. It didn’t need lightning strikes and Stark mini-missiles. While SHIELD or the Avengers would certainly save his ass and catch the bad guy, it was hard to predict just how much of the neighbourhood would be left. On top of that, he was meant to have a secret identity. If SHIELD knew that it was so easy to track him down, then they might try to shorten his leash. It looked like it would be a high price to pay when he could probably take care of it by himself.

Clint judged the distance to the corner of the building. He could hear chattering voices approaching and, praying that he wasn’t reading the situation wrong, he took a deep breath and darted out from behind the dumpster. He knocked one teenager off his feet as he thudded through the small knot of people, but the only noise he heard in response was some shouting and cursing. No shots were fired.

Clint slumped against a doorway and tried to collect himself. It was probable that someone had called the police at the first shot. And it was possible that even with the silencer, the following shots hadn’t gone unnoticed. It was likely that the shooter would be long gone before the cops arrived. Clint could feel the tingle-burn of adrenaline, and pushed himself away from the side of Phil’s building. When it came to people shooting at him during his time off, he was allowed to take it personally.

Searching a building took a long time when there was only one person on the search team. Clint had his throwing knives gripped in each hand and the voice of reason telling him it was a bad idea as he moved through the second floor, checking room by room. The building shared its ground floor between a Chinese restaurant and a struggling clothing store. The second floor had been taken up with storage areas for the two businesses. The second and third were shaping up to be cheap accommodation with one shared bathroom between the two levels. It was late afternoon and most of the occupants were staying in for the night. 

Clint wasn’t interested in searching every room – he was just keeping an eye out for a fleeing body as he worked his way up to the sixth floor. Pausing in stairwells for the tread of other footsteps, listening by each door for the small sounds of people keeping quiet out of fear, of someone standing on the other side of the door and listening for his progress. The top floor was empty. It was being renovated into a penthouse apartment, lording over the cramped rooms below. There were walls partially knocked down and drop sheets softening the occasional footstep across raw floorboards. Clint found the window the sniper had been shooting from, the pane knocked neatly out, no broken glass left on the floor. No convenient calling card or autograph scrawled on the wall. Clint frowned. He wasn’t a detective, he didn’t like mysteries. But his assailant had clearly vacated the area and Clint could see a police car pulling up in front of Phil’s building. Probably he should go down and be of assistance. Probably he should put his knives away before he did.

He checked his watch once he was outside the building and certain that the area was clear. The distraction had eaten up far more of his afternoon than he had bargained for. Phil’s plane had landed long ago and Clint was definitely late for dinner. He needed to race back upstairs and neaten up the place. He nearly tripped over Phil’s small, crotchety neighbour as he started up the steps, and she grabbed onto his forearms.

“Gas,” she spat. “Coming up from the basement. Fucking landlord makes the whole building one oven for his suicidal balls.” Clint paused, because that was a phrase that demanded a mental image.

“What-?” he started, and then he saw someone across the road straighten up and turn towards them. Androgynous in a loose green jumper with a black beanie covering their hair, raising a handgun and looking far too much like they meant business. Clint threw himself forwards, crashing down to the ground with a banshee of a woman beneath him and the sound of a bullet being fired at them from far too close for comfort.

Bullet. Gas. Ah.

It wasn’t an explosion so much as a _whoompf_. A very hot, very fast ‘whoompf’. Clint felt the hair at the back of his neck sizzle, the heat sinking into the side of his jacket. He rolled off Phil’s neighbour, towards the building to keep her shielded from the flames. 

“Assfuck,” she said, which Clint thought was particularly harsh given that he had just saved her from becoming a campfire marshmallow. She sat up with a stiff spine like she was one of the undead and turned to the shooter, who had lowered their gun in surprise, and yelled “Assfuck!” again. Then she shoved a hand down the front of her black woollen shirt and pulled out a .45 semi-automatic pistol, the black barrel of the gun catching the odd glint of light from the flaming building they were sprawled in front of. It was so heavy that her two spindly arms shook as she held it out in front of her, but that didn’t stop her from firing off three rounds before the gun jammed. Clint tried to snatch it away from her and got an elbow to the face for his efforts. And, of course, when he finally managed to extricate himself from the pile of furious old lady, his assailant has disappeared.

And then, as some kind of badly-timed cherry on the top of the sundae of awful that had been Clint’s afternoon, a yellow taxi pulled up across the road and Phil climbed out.

Clint shakily walked over to him, one hand rubbing the singed hairs at the back of his neck. Phil had the bland expression of someone who was not believing what they were seeing just yet. He raised his eyebrows a little as shock wore off and surprise slowly pressed its way across his features, and then Clint couldn’t tear his attention away from the way the lines by Phil’s eyes shifted and the angle of his mouth changed slightly. Subtle horror took over Phil’s expression, and Clint cringed. He suspected that _Hi Honey, how was the conference?_ would not cut it as a greeting.

“Okay,” he said, holding his hands up and showing that he was willing to admit the obvious. “This looks bad.”

Phil wordlessly shoved his satchel bag at Clint, and ran into the building.


	4. Chapter 4

Of course, Clint’s phone went off as he was running up the stairs after Phil. Clint was slowly gaining, but Phil had the speed of desperation and a good head start. The moment Clint had spent gaping as his boyfriend had run into a slightly-on-fire building had not worked in his favour. It also didn’t hurt that Phil was in jeans and a pair of running shoes – Clint knew well that appropriate footwear could make all of the difference when it came to a chase.

“I can’t talk now – I’m dragging my boyfriend out of a burning building,” he said by way of greeting as he bounced off the wall at the third floor landing.

“Oh, is he home?” Tony asked, all polite innocence and high tea charm. “Because I can drop by and say ‘hi’. I know you’ve been dying to introduce me.”

“Tell Natasha to check her phone,” Clint snapped back, and then he hung up and shoved his phone into the back pocket of his pants with as much force as he could muster.

He caught up with Phil inside the apartment, Phil already staggering back out of his bedroom. He had something wrapped up in his jacket and, judging by the unhappy yowl coming from underneath the material, Clint could guess what it was. “What the hell are you thinking?” he yelled. The apartment was hot and smoky, which admittedly wasn’t the best setting for an argument but it did contribute to Clint getting caught up in the heat of the moment. Phil stopped short and stared at him in surprise.

“The build-up of gas would have burned off with the initial explosion,” Phil replied, between ragged breaths. “Leaving just the pipeline fire in the basement... Right?”

Clint stared at him for a moment. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how these things work.”

Phil looked around his apartment, and Clint was ready to grab him and sling him over a shoulder if he stopped to try and rescue photo albums or something. “So we should get out of here?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Clint snapped, grabbing Phil’s arm and shoving him towards the door. Phil turned left instead of right into the hallway, and Clint was ready to drag him back on course by the back of his shirt until he realised that Phil was heading for the fire escape. Trust Phil to remember the evacuation protocol. Clint still hadn’t filled out that damn SHIELD fire safety online assessment.

The sun was going down as they climbed down the side of the building, the going slow as Phil had one arm occupied with clutching a quietly protesting cat to his chest. Clint went down each ladder first and then did his best to help Phil’s descent, well aware that his hands resting at Phil’s lower back as soon as it was in reach were probably more of a hindrance than a help, that his encouraging words were largely for his own benefit.

“We need a vet,” Phil said as soon as they were on the ground. Which was a little unfair, because Clint had been working on an impressive lecture about _not_ running in to burning buildings that he would probably never be able to give to anyone else. 

“Okay,” Clint said. Phil looked around for a taxi, but there were none of the streets and Clint had doubts that they’d be able to occupy one anyway. In his experience, taxi drivers generally didn’t like people making their cabs smell like smoke and rubble. The odour of burned fur probably wouldn’t help their case. He looked around and saw Phil’s neighbour, still holding Phil’s satchel. Clint had shoved it at her as he had raced after Phil into the building. “Thanks,” he said to her, snatching it back. Then, over the sounds of her cussing him out, he offered it to Phil. “Here.” It took some negotiation, but eventually Clint convinced Phil that a cat in a bag would be a better transport option, and Phil managed to snugly tuck Mittens inside.

“The only emergency vet I know is miles away and the street is blocked off to traffic and—” Phil said, trailing along behind Clint as he led the way to the back of the building. 

Clint cut Phil off by shoving a motorbike helmet over his head. Then, over some muffled protestations, he pulled off his jacket and proceeded to stuff Phil into it. “Get on,” he said as he mounted his bike and inserted the key. Phil hesitated, but before Clint could open his mouth to list all of the reasons why Phil should do as he was told (which started and ended with “This is the best idea I’ve got,”) Phil was slinging a leg over the back of the seat and trying to settle himself in.

Phil wasn’t the worst passenger Clint had ever had on his bike, largely because he was conscious and all of his blood was staying inside his body, but he also wasn’t the best. The ideal location for a pillion passenger was right behind the rider, arms wrapped around the Clint’s waist and able to follow his lead when it came to leaning into the turns. Not only did they have the bundled-up Mittens between them, but after the first time Clint needed to brake suddenly and Phil was thrown forward, he kept one arm braced across Clint’s shoulders to keep from crushing Mittens between them. Which meant that Clint had to deal with Phil’s weight shoving at his shoulders instead of resting along his back. In addition, Phil had his free hand wrapped around Clint’s belt just in front of his hip as a way to anchor himself, and the yanking there every time Clint sped up and Phil lurched back was not helping his centre of balance. That said, every time Phil pulled his hand away to point out a turn left Clint terrified that Phil would topple off the back of the bike.

If they hadn’t been dating, and Phil hadn’t at least been making an effort to lean into the corners, Clint would have kicked him off and made him walk the rest of the way. They were going to have to go on some long rides once Clint’s heart rate dropped back to normal and they no longer had a singed cat between them.

Clint broke a lot of speed-related laws getting them to the emergency vet. And laws about riders wearing helmets. And he may have taken the curb a few times when the traffic was too hectic to weave through. But the important thing was that he was a responsible rider and no one had gotten hurt, and it was entirely unfair that a motorcycle cop pulled up beside him out the front of the vet, lights flashing. “Fucking weekends,” Clint muttered to himself. Phil stumbled off the bike without a backwards glance and left Clint to negotiate with an officer who seemed very interested in handcuffing him.

“No, wait, I’m an Avenger,” Clint protested. His voice was rough from the carbon monoxide he’d inhaled in the building and then the cold air that had dried out his nose and throat on the ride. His eyes were still watering and it was fair to say that he was not at his best. “My card is in my wallet, I swear.”

“Right,” the cop replied. “Because the Avengers all have little club membership cards.”

“I thought it was stupid too,” Clint replied, “but it is actually a thing and will you _stop_ grabbing me.”

“Sir,” the cop said sternly, “are you resisting arrest?”

“Shouldn’t you at least be asking to see my licence?” Clint asked. “I’ve seen _Dog Cops_ , I know how this is meant to go.”

“That show is not the best way to educate yourself about police procedure,” the cop replied. “The episode with the four concurrent interrogations? Nothing works that way.”

“I haven’t seen that much of it anyway,” Clint replied. “Come on, Officer Hands; wallet in the back left pocket. You know you want to see my secret Avengers club card.”

Clint had never had to work so hard to convince someone to put their hands in his pants, though he was just smart enough to keep that observation to himself. A quick flip through Clint’s wallet led to some calls being made, and those calls led to other calls. Clint shifted his weight from one foot to the other, cold in the evening air without his jacket and less than impressed about being held up.

It took a lot of haranguing, but eventually Clint convinced the cop that since they had established that he was Clint Barton, that he had a fixed address, that he was indeed some kind of a government employee, and that the bike he was riding on was his own and was registered to that fixed address, perhaps Clint _didn’t_ need to be arrested immediately. Clint tried to play the angle that getting an innocent bystander and his cat from the site of an explosion to medical care was part of his civic duty, but the admission that they had left the scene of a residential fire at high speed nearly started the whole argument all over again. 

Clint was deeply glad that SHIELD had a hotline for these kinds of incidents. Sure, if he had been on duty they would have denied all knowledge of him until more information could be gathered and SHIELD could make an educated decision on whether to intervene. But Clint was on medical leave, and somewhere in the depths of SHIELD a very bored agent had been tracking the movements of his bike and waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for a phone call with a prepared script of “Yes, officer, we’re sad to say he’s one of ours”. Sometimes working for a deeply paranoid intelligence agency had its uses.

Too much time had passed before Clint was able to slip inside the waiting room of the emergency vet. Phil was sitting on the hard, plastic bench with his head in his hands. “Hey,” Clint said as he sat beside Phil. “What’s the word?”

Phil slowly lifted his head up from his hands and rested his chin on his cupped palms, his fingers curled in front of his mouth. “Not great,” he replied.

Clint wrapped an arm around Phil’s shoulder and tugged him close. “How not great?” he asked. Phil covered his eyes with one hand and let out a shuddery breath, and Clint knew that the prognosis was not good. 

Clint had never really understood what Phil saw in his weird, twitchy little cat. Mittens was antisocial and moody and _sharp_ when applied to the face, but Phil was completely smitten with her. If Phil talked to anyone socially for more than ten minutes, Mittens would come up in conversation. He had a photo of her set as his phone wallpaper and would show it to people without the least provocation. Clint’s own phone was slowly collecting a number of Mittens-related photographs, and he kept them because he thought that Phil’s relationship with the cat was as cute as it was strange.

Clint tightened his arm around Phil’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to Phil’s temple. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go and talk to them.”

“She’s in a lot of pain,” the vet said in a quiet voice as Clint closed the door of the little consulting room behind him. That wasn’t a great way to open, and Clint’s heart dropped.

“You have painkillers though, right?” he asked. “And she’s a young cat. Young animals can bounce back.”

The vet considered Clint with an unreadable expression for a moment. “Are you an owner?” she asked.

“Owner’s boyfriend,” Clint replied. He decided not to mention that Mittens had been in his care when the whole slightly-exploding building thing had happened.

The vet gave Clint a long, stern look, and then gestured for him to follow her into the back of the building. Mittens the Second was laid out in a small operating theatre, and Clint cringed when he saw her. “She was partially crushed by some furniture,” the vet explained. “There’s a lot of damage, and that’s ignoring the burns.” Mittens had a large section of raw and blistering skin, covered by a thick layer of gel. She wasn’t in good shape. She was quite noticeably out of shape. Clint wasn’t an animal expert, but he understood that “not good” had been an understatement.

“It would be kindest for her to be euthanised,” the vet said in a gentle voice. “She’s in a lot of pain, and even if we could perform surgery on her there is such a low risk of survival. I can only suggest—”

“Why can’t you do the surgery?” Clint asked, shifting his attention to the vet. She seemed startled by the intensity of his gaze, and he pressed closer. “You said ‘if’ you could perform the surgery.”

The vet collected herself, and her tone lost some of its delicate sweetness. “It would be a long surgery,” she said honestly, “and we don’t have the staff. There would be a lot of reconstruction involved and we don’t have enough people with that kind of experience to guarantee a successful operation. Those are very, very expensive procedures and it’s not likely that she will live through them. We would need blood for transfusion that we don’t have on hand, and if we sent out a request for some now we wouldn’t get it until midday tomorrow at the earliest. You are looking at a cat who has hours, not a whole day. And they are not going to be happy hours.” Her face softened again. “It will be best for the animal, and best for your partner, if we come to this decision quickly.”

Clint inhaled sharply and held his breath for one long moment, weighing up his options. He exhaled in a rush. “Give me half an hour,” he said. “Just... do whatever it is that you do, and keep doing it for half an hour, okay?” The vet nodded, assuming that Clint was going to spend the time talking Phil around to the inevitable.

Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket as he re-entered the little consulting room and put a call in through to Sitwell.

“If it’s about the cops who want to drag you out of some vet office and arrest you, I’m already working on it,” Sitwell said by way of greeting.

“No,” Clint replied. “Wait, there are multiple cops now?”

“Word about your sparkling personality has gotten around,” Sitwell replied.

“I need a favour,” Clint said.

Sitwell laughed. “You have used up more than your fair share. Have you noticed how you’re still allowed to pal around with your little team? If you keep fucking up, Rambeu is going to stick you back in basic training until you go grey.”

“I’m with the team because you still need me,” Clint replied sharply. “And if you don’t help me now then I will fucking quit.” Sitwell was silent on the end of the line, waiting to see if Clint was throwing a tantrum or if he was serious. 

“I have sacrificed a lot for SHIELD,” Clint continued. “I have no life. I try to have a life and instead I get cockblocked by Captain America and taken out of the country for weeks at a time. Do you know how many times I’ve been quarantined for you in the past two years? Are you aware of the injuries I’ve sustained, the lives I have saved, and the absolute _bullshit_ that I put up with? You people seem to think that I’m hanging around because I have nothing better to do, and if you can’t do one simple thing for me right now you will find out just how fucking wrong you are.”

Clint was a little surprised at everything that had burst out of him, but he kept his jaw clenched and his breathing even. In that moment, he was completely serious. He would walk away from SHIELD, and maybe he’d regret it and maybe he’d go crawling back, but he’d had a rough month and he just wanted _one thing_ in his life to be easy. 

“What do you need?” Sitwell finally asked.

~*~

Clint knew that SHIELD was involved in all kinds of research, and he knew that sometimes cats were used as research animals — it made sense that someone, somewhere on the SHIELD payroll would be an expert in cat-related reconstruction. So when a team of eight people kicked the door in, ranging from a staff vet up to a primary investigator for rehabilitative techniques and all the way down to lab assistants lugging in small generators and boxes of latex-free gloves, Clint wasn’t exactly surprised at the turnout. Maybe surprised that they had turned up for him.

It would have been a funny sight when the SHIELD team finally burst in and took charge of the scene, if Clint hadn’t been sitting with his arm around Phil for forty minutes, gnawing on his phone as they waited. Ignoring the sympathetic looks from the receptionist and the occasional disapproving sniff from the veterinarian. Clint had just told Phil that he’d called in a favour to get a second opinion. No promises, no guarantee. As time had passed, Clint had considered the idea that at least if Mittens did have to be put down, he would know that he had done everything he could have short of giving her mouth-to-mouth himself.

“Was that a SWAT team?” Phil asked when the last person wearing a SHIELD staff badge had thudded past, laden down with cases of tools and implements.

“Yes,” Clint replied. “A Surgical something Animal Team. I’m not sure what the ‘W’ stands for. I’m not great with anagrams.” The corner of Phil’s mouth lifted slightly, and while he still looked tense and worried, Clint was glad for the hint of a smile. Clint asked the receptionist if they could cash in the coffees that he had offered them earlier, and the young man looked relieved to have an excuse to slip away from the front desk and nose around the sudden bustle in the operating theatre.

Clint slumped back against the hard bench, his arm sliding down Phil’s back until his hand was resting at Phil’s hip. Phil had taken off Clint’s jacket and helmet, and they were sitting in a bulky pile beside him on the bench. He felt soft and warm without the riding gear, and Clint felt a deep frustration that they were stuck in an uncomfortably bright room, that bad things kept happening to them. “How did you get Mittens, anyway?” he asked.

“I adopted her from a shelter,” Phil replied. “I wanted a cat, and she was just past the destructive kitten stage. We didn’t hate one another on sight. It seemed like a good match.”

Clint rubbed his hand back and forth across Phil’s lower back. “And why did you want a cat?”

Phil was quiet for a moment, his elbows resting on his knees and his head hanging forwards as he stared down at his feet. “When my ex and I split up,” he said slowly, “he wanted me to stay in the apartment. We’d moved to New York on my money, and I was the one paying the rent.” He turned and looked at Clint with a rueful smile. “He thought that we could stay friends and keep living in the same place until his money started coming in.”

“This guy sounds like a keeper,” Clint observed.

“We weren’t especially well matched, in retrospect,” Phil admitted. “As I was carting my stuff out the door, he told me that I wouldn’t be able to survive in New York on my own. That I would get mugged, and burgled, and end up dying alone.”

“ _Great_ guy.”

"Mm. I think he was worried that I’d try to make him pay back the cost of the move. Anyway, I told him that I would buy a taser and a cat and be fine. I did get mugged about a week after I moved into my own place, so I went and got the taser and did a short course on defence techniques.” 

“You do kick a lot of ass with Mittens the First,” Clint said, squeezing Phil’s hip. Phil smiled softly in response.

“I haven’t been mugged again. And when I had settled into the job at Crosstown and had some more free time, I did start getting lonely. So it seemed only logical it initiate phase two of the plan.”

“And have you ever been burgled?” Clint asked.

“Not yet. I can only assume that the Mittenses keep my incredibly valuable collection of battered and vandalised young adult literature safe.”

“You should consider putting those behind glass,” Clint commented. “Get some kind of laser beam security system installed.”

“I probably should have considered that before my building caught fire,” Phil returned.

“Ah. Yeah.” Clint scratched the back of his head with his free hand. The top of his neck had been burned, and it itched and ached all at once. “It didn’t look like it was too on fire when we left.” The gas itself had burned off quickly, and the fires on the first floor had seemed to be small, adjacent blazes. The fourth floor, where Phil lived, had its share of smoke and vapour but there hadn’t been any sign of flames. Neither of them felt the need to mention that fires could spread suddenly, but the way Phil slumped forward let Clint know that he was considering it. 

Clint spotted Natasha walking along the front of the building, and was glad of the distraction. She waved to someone before stepping through the door. “I thought I told you not to have adventures without me,” she said with a smirk.

“I called you,” Clint returned. “Not my fault you didn’t RSVP.”

“I brought food,” she said, holding out a brown paper bag. “I know that at least one of you missed dinner.”

Phil thanked her like the gentleman he was, while Clint opened the bag and stuck his nose in, inhaling the smell of fresh bread and cold salad. He looked up at Natasha and frowned. “No burgers?”

“They would have been cold and congealed by the time they got to you,” Natasha replied.

Clint gave her a forlorn look. “But... burgers,” he said, and she smacked him in the arm. “So, that thing you needed to talk to me about?” Clint prompted. “The one that was not incredibly important and could wait?”

“Oh yeah,” Natasha said, feigning sudden realisation. “You know, it’s probably redundant now,” she waved a hand airily. “Why get excited about if it the shooting’s stopped?”

Phil looked up at her. “Shooting?”

“Just a little bit of shooting,” Natasha said, giving Phil her attempt at a genuinely comforting smile. “They weren’t aiming at anything important.”

Phil turned at Clint, wide-eyed. “You got shot at?”

“Okay, how did you know she was talking about me when she said ‘nothing important’?” Clint asked. “And I’m fine. It was no big deal, just some punk trying to show off, and Natasha and I can take care of it _later_.” He stressed the last word in Natasha’s direction. He had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly what her news was, and he didn’t want all of the dirty details being discussed in public. Phil picked up on the pointed looks Clint and Natasha were exchanging, and wisely didn’t ask for the full story.

“Is that why you wanted to know if I own a gun?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“No!”

“Right. Good to know. Dangerous things.”

“The good news,” Natasha said, turning to smile brightly at Phil, “is that the building looks okay so far. I think putting the fires out caused more damage than the actual explosion.”

“Anyone on the scene?” Clint asked.

“Agent Woo is in charge of cleanup for now,” Natasha replied, and Clint nodded. It would be a boring job, but Woo didn’t often get to coordinate a team. He probably would have been thrilled with the chance to organise the cafeteria roster. “And Tony’s there,” Natasha added. Clint cringed. “Oh, lighten up,” she said. “He’s having a blast.” She smiled apologetically at Phil. “If you’ll pardon the phrase.”

Phil had pulled a sandwich out of the bag and was eating it slowly. He waved away Natasha’s concerns as he chewed. “Will I be able to go back tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha replied, and she gave Clint a pointed look.

Clint paused in unwrapping his own sandwich and sighed heavily “Fine, fine. I’ll call Tony.” He pulled his phone out of his back pocket with some difficulty (his pants had been chosen on their flattering properties, not the convenience of their pockets) and swyped in the code to unlock it. He had several missed calls from Tony, and he tapped on the most recent notification until the phone got irritated with him and put the call through.

“You have reached the reception desk of Potts Incorporated Sexy Science Strip-o-grams. For biology, press one. For chemistry, press two. For mathematics and physics, press three. For social sciences, please hang up on yourself so I don’t have to.”

Clint waited in silence, and eventually Tony cracked. “It’s really creepy when you do that,” he complained. “Would it kill you to open with a ‘hello’?”

“It might,” Clint returned, and Tony snorted a laugh.

“You were not lying about the burning building,” Tony said. “I kind of feel bad for telling everyone that it was your weakest excuse yet.”

“How’s it look?” Clint asked, cutting to the chase.

“Hideous, but I think it’s meant to look that way. I don’t know who picked out the carpet in the halls but they did not take into account the decades of tenants who would be peeing in corners.”

Clint pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tony,” he said, trying to recapture Tony’s attention.

“No big structural damage,” Tony reported. “A lot of the lower windows got blown out when the gas went off, and the whole place seems a little trashed from the shockwave. Not as bad as one of my parties, but some general clean up is needed. Gas and power have been cut off until further notice and some guys are standing guard to discourage anyone picking through the place for souvenirs. Woo is packing everyone off to friends and family.”

“Great,” Clint said flatly. 

“If it weren’t for the mystery of how the whole thing went off, I would have gone home by now,” Tony continued.

“Gas and a bullet,” Clint replied. “And it turns out it was the old man who owns the amusement park. Mystery solved.”

“A bullet could not cause an explosion,” Tony assured Clint.

“It was more of an ignition than an explosion,” Clint said, and Tony ignored him. 

“Bullets don’t have enough heat—”

“Tony, bullets are hot. Gunpowder ignition is really hot. Didn’t you make guns? How do you not know this?” 

“—and if people were standing around and talking then the gas to oxygen ratio couldn’t have been high enough.”

“Gas was inside, people were outside. It’s not rocket science.”

“It’s not possible,” Tony replied confidently

“Tony, I was there.”

“Not possible.”

Clint huffed irritably. “Didn’t you once tell me that you can freeze a rock?”

“You can freeze water _on_ a rock,” Natasha commented.

“That’s what I told him,” Clint exclaimed. “Natasha says you’re an idiot,” he said into the phone.

“It must have been an unrelated cause,” Tony insisted. “Maybe someone lit a cigarette.”

“Are you actually helping there? Or are you just annoying the fire guys?”

“I’m providing a crucial service to the official investigative team by troubleshooting their theories,” Tony replied. “Have you said ‘hi’ to your boyfriend for me?” 

Clint grunted and hung up. When he looked over, Phil was looking down at his sandwich and trying to repress a smile. “What?” Clint asked irritably.

Phil’s smiled widened slightly. “Nothing,” he said. Natasha was biting her lip and looking away, making a show of studying the posters of baby animals on the walls. Phil thought that Clint’s bickering with Tony was cute. Clint groaned quietly to himself and tucked his phone away.

“How’s the kitty?” Natasha asked, looking at Phil.

“I don’t know,” Phil replied honestly. “We haven’t heard anything since half a hospital arrived, so I’m taking that as a good sign.”

Natasha put a hand of Phil’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I’ll go see if I can get some news,” she said, and then she disappeared through the door leading to the little consultation rooms. Clint looked after her in mild surprise – Natasha wasn’t an overly-friendly person. He knew that she approved of Phil, but the gesture of affection was still a little unexpected.

When she was out of sight, the air went out of Phil in one big rush. Clint hadn’t been aware that Phil was putting on a strong face in front of Natasha until it was gone. Clint wrapped his arm around Phil’s shoulder and tugged him close, and Phil flopped against Clint’s side. “Don’t worry,” Clint mumbled into Phil’s hair. 

When Phil replied, his words were partially lost in the front of Clint’s shirt. “You really got shot at?”

Clint pressed a kiss to Phil’s temple. “How was the conference?” he asked.

“It was good,” Phil replied. “I got you a present.”

“Really?”

“It was free,” Phil warned him, and then he slipped a hand into one of the pockets of his satchel bag. He handed Clint a little plastic packet with some knick knacks inside. “They had a heap of them at the registration table,” he explained. “The little book reminded me of you.”

The packet contained a white button with a blue logo on it that proclaimed that literacy was “learning for life”. There was a pen that was about as long as Clint’s forefinger and had the website for the conference printed along its length. And then there was charm in the shape of a book with a dark red cover. _Robin Hood_ was printed down the side in tiny letters, with two crossed arrows on the front cover. There was a little strap that seemed appropriate for affixing it to a mobile phone, and it was slightly bigger than Clint’s thumbnail.

Usually when Clint’s partners got him a ‘thinking of you’ present, it was a tube of flavoured lube or a spanking. A long time ago a girl had given him a cassette of the _Purple Rain_ album. He wasn’t sure what had happened to it.

“Thank you,” Clint said, and then had to clear his throat. “This is neat.” He pulled his phone out and held it in his teeth while he got the plastic envelope open. Then he had a moment of confusion because he’d never had a mobile phone before and had no idea how those charms worked. Phil gently pulled the phone from Clint’s hand and neatly looped the strap of the charm through a small notch at one corner of the phone. Clint had been worried that he had broken part of the case when he had first noticed the notch – it was good to know that it was meant to be there. Phil offered Clint his phone, and Clint tapped at the charm and watched it swing back and forth before taking it.

“Thank you,” he repeated, hugging Phil close. 

“If I’d known you would be this thrilled, I would have gotten you the whole set of classics,” Phil replied.

“I’ve never had a phone thing before,” Clint said. “And people are always stealing my pens, so that will come in handy.” Clint had an entirely unjustified reputation for losing pens. It wasn’t his fault that people constantly ‘borrowed’ them then failed to give them back, so he’d stopped carrying more than one pen at a time and had taken to appropriating some of his own. The issue of pen-ownership at SHIELD could get intense.

Natasha backed out of the door to the rest of the facility, carrying the two coffees they had been promised by the absent receptionist. Phil straightened out of his slump against Clint, and took the coffee gratefully. He only looked a little disappointed when he realised it was instant.

“They’re getting her stable to transport her to a better facility,” Natasha said, dropping to a crouch in front of them, her arms crossed over her knees. “Word is, they’re pretty confident that they can get her patched up and well on the road to recovery. She won’t be coming home anytime soon, but they’ll call you when she’s out of surgery which will probably be sometime tomorrow. There’s a lab being set up to receive them here in New York, and if all goes well you’ll be able to visit her until she can go home.” Natasha delivered the news with a soft, comforting smile. The very picture of reassurance.

Phil was silent for a moment as he drank some of his coffee. “I am very grateful for everything you’ve both done,” he said at last, raising his eyes to look at first Clint and then Natasha. Clint could feel the ‘but’ coming at high speed, and tensed in anticipation. “And for SHIELD’s response and support,” he continued. “But...”

“But it’s a lot of fuss for once cat?” Clint suggested, and Natasha slapped him on the knee which led to Clint spilling lukewarm coffee on his lap. He shoved her shoulder and she shoved him back, and Phil just pulled some clean tissues out of his satchel and handed them to Clint.

“Yes,” Phil said when they had calmed down some. “It’s a lot of fuss for my little cat.”

“Look,” Natasha said in her business voice. “We try not to advertise this too much, but SHIELD actually has a lot of budget set aside for fixing up problems that would make it look really mean and shady if, for example, they got into the mainstream press or went to court. An Avenger taking out a whole building while cat-sitting is a story we really don’t want the news-entertainment shows getting their hands on.” Clint cringed. Taking the building out had been entirely unintentional. “Intervening early and to excess minimises bad press, is likely to be good press if it does get out, and makes things run easily for everyone.” Natasha continued. “Also, you have a cute cat and a few people went to bat for her.” 

Phil was silent for a moment as he digested the information. “This generosity,” he said delicately, “is not something that I’m going to be able to repay.”

Natasha let out a tinkling laugh that was happy and amused and so very charming. “This isn’t the kind of thing they expect you to repay,” she said, smiling up at Phil. Clint gave Phil a comforting squeeze and hoped that he wouldn’t glance over, because Clint wasn’t anywhere near as good at lying as Natasha was. “Let SHIELD foot the bill for this one,” Natasha said soothingly. “The matter of your apartment is going to be a lot trickier to resolve, so just be happy that this problem is going to work itself out for you.”

Phil groaned then, and covered his face with one hand. Clint rubbed Phil’s back and let out a quiet sigh. He’d been waiting for the severity of the apartment situation to hit home. Natasha leaned close to Phil and laid a hand on her knee. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “You helped Clint out of a bad situation. We’ll do the same for you.”

Phil nodded without saying anything, and it suddenly occurred to Clint that Phil was probably feeling very overwhelmed. When Clint was overwhelmed, he liked to have some space. A lot of space. He patted Phil on the shoulder and then stood up, gesturing for Natasha to do the same.

“Thanks for dinner,” he said, taking a few steps away to give Phil a moment. “Even if it wasn’t burgers. And for coming down.”

“You’re just lucky I won the arm wrestle,” Natasha replied.

Clint stared at her and waited for comprehension to click. “... Arm wrestle?” he asked at last.

“Well, everyone wanted to bust down here and make sure you both were alright. Pepper didn’t want to crowd you so she suggested we draw straws, but Tony didn’t want to leave it to luck – I bet he didn’t trust Pepper not to rig the whole thing – so he demanded that we sort it out the manly way.”

“And you kicked his ass?”

Natasha grinned. “Instantly. Thor sat the competition out, but Steve and I beat the others fair and square.”

“Steve’s here?”

“Yeah, he stowed your bike somewhere safe and now he’s waiting in the car. You know how he gets around sad animals.”

Clint looked over at Phil, who had his face buried in his hands. “We should probably get him somewhere for the night,” Clint observed. He suspected that Phil would spend all night in the waiting room and then try to go to work in the morning unless there was an intervention.

“We have his case in the car,” Natasha replied. “We’re good to go.”

Clint quietly walked back to Phil and picked up their abandoned mugs of shitty, instant coffee. He handed them to Natasha, who put them on the reception desk and gave them a moment of privacy as Clint crouched down by Phil’s side. “Come on,” he said quietly. “We should turn in for the night.” Phil nodded and straightened up some, reaching for his satchel bag. “Steve will take us wherever you want to go.”

Phil looked up at Clint with an absent expression on his face. “Steve?” he asked. Clint realised a moment too late that he usually referred to Steve as ‘The Cap’ whenever he came up in conversation, and Natasha stepped in before he could clarify.

“Captain Rogers,” she said.

“Ah,” Phil said. “Right.” And then he covered his face with one hand again. Clint was used to Phil Coulson – calm in every situation and ready to charge into battle no matter how ill-advised it may be. He was slightly less familiar with a Phil Coulson whose ears had suddenly gone very, very red. Then again, everyone had a chink in the armour when it came to Captain America. “Okay,” Phil said, dropping his hand and shaking his head as if to clear it. “I’m okay.”

“Hanging out with superheroes does get weird sometimes,” Natasha said sympathetically.

Phil looked up and gave her a wry smile. “This isn’t even close to the weirdest thing that’s happened to me,” he said dryly. As they walked out of the reception, Phil gripped Clint’s hand tightly. “Don’t let me say anything stupid,” he murmured. Clint bit back a smile, and squeezed Phil’s hand in response.

~*~

Clint and Phil slid into the backseat, with Phil behind Natasha and Clint feeling a little squished behind Steve. The passenger behind Steve never got a lot of leg room, and every now and then Clint was distracted by how strange it was to see Steve in something as small as a car. It was hard to believe that all of that bulk and patriotism could fit behind the wheel.

“I hear you two had some adventures today,” Steve said in a playfully stern voice as he pulled away from the curb.

Clint sighed at the subtle dig, and then an awkward silence stretched in the car. He glanced over at Phil, who had a carefully blank look on his face. Both of his hands were tightly clutching his satchel. Phil noticed Clint watching him, and gave him a deeply perplexed look. Clint just shrugged in response. It wasn’t like he had a great reputation when it came to social graces.

Aware that he should probably say something, Phil hazarded a “Yes?”

“Take it from someone who’s run into a lot of burning buildings, it’s not a habit you want to cultivate,” Steve said sternly. “An inconvenience is temporary, but dead is forever. Well, usually.” And then he glanced at Phil in the rear vision mirror and flashed him a wide, easy smile.

Phil was momentarily stunned by the smile, and sounded a little dazed as he replied, “Yes, sir.” Steve laughed, a bright sound that was completely absent of mockery or derision. If anything it sounded self-deprecating, like he was surprised to hear the title on their cosy little road trip. Clint slouched down until his knees were digging into the back of Steve’s seat, and allowed himself a few seconds of a good, healthy scowl.

“Where are we going?” he asked suddenly.

“I thought we’d head back to the Tower,” Steve said brightly. “You two can get cleaned up, and you know that Tony will have you for as long as you-”

“No!” Clint and Phil said simultaneously, and then they glanced at one another in surprise. “Thank you for the kind offer,” Phil said. “But it would be a nightmare trying to get to work from Midtown. It is very, very generous of you, but I’d prefer to stay close by.”

“Right,” Clint said. He had mainly wanted to keep Tony from terrorising his boyfriend, but Phil had some good points too.

“If there’s a motel in the area..?” Phil suggested. 

Natasha slid back a panel of the dashboard, and started tapping away at a screen. “Working on it,” she said. “Okay, done. It’s not the closest to Crosstown High, but it has a bakery in the ground floor and I can book you in indefinitely.”

Phil pressed his lips together at the last part though he refrained from commenting. Clint had a strong suspicion that Phil didn’t exactly plan on being a kept man while his life got itself back to normal. Clint couldn’t blame him for that but he wondered how stubborn Phil was willing to be. If Phil tried to turn down a room with a Jacuzzi, Clint was going to have to intervene.

“Sounds great,” Clint said while Phil was still measuring up his own answer, and Steve changed course. 

The rest of the ride passed mostly in silence, except for a moment when Steve started humming a jaunty tune and Natasha reached over and slapped his thigh to shut him up. Steve had a special gift for getting patriotic campfire songs stuck in Natasha’s head, and one day she was going to make him pay. Steve quietly started singing another song under his breath, and Natasha hissed at him in Russian, making him grin. Phil observed the exchange with a kind of morbid fascination, and Clint reached over and punched the side of Natasha’s seat.

“Would it kill you both to behave?” he asked.

“This from you,” Natasha returned, but she and Steve both made a show of settling down. 

“Don’t make me separate you two,” Phil said sternly, before suddenly remembering himself and looking quietly mortified at having spoken out of turn, but Steve snorted a laugh and Clint could see a sharp grin on Natasha’s face. Clint reached over and squeezed Phil’s wrist, and then they were pulling up outside a bakery that was shut for the night, and the narrow doorway of a midrange hotel.

“We picked up some extra clothes for you,” Natasha said, handing Phil a canvas shopping bag as Clint got Phil’s case out of the boot of the car. “Just to tide you over.”

Phil took the bag and then winced with a sudden realisation. “I forgot my jacket,” he said, and indeed he had. It was back at the vet, probably waiting to be incinerated. Clint tried to find a nice way to tell Phil that he really didn’t want the jacket, that there were plenty of jackets out there that didn’t have bits of cat stuck to the lining, and came up empty. 

“I’ll pick it up for you later,” Natasha said smoothly. She gave Clint a look that told him to be on his best behaviour, which was entirely unnecessary and a little bit rich coming from her, and then slid back into the passenger seat.

“I want you kids to have a quiet night, okay?” Steve said sternly, from the driver’s seat. “Rest up.” Clint rolled his eyes and gave Steve a variation of the Cub Scout salute, except only the middle finger was extended. Steve shook his head in mock disappointment and then drove off into the night.

“He’s only like that half the time,” Clint said to Phil, who was looking a little star-struck around the edges. “Maybe sixty percent.”

“Your friends are...” Phil trailed off, not quite sure how to finish the sentence.

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Pretty much. Come on, let’s get you checked in.”

~*~

The room was small, and the decorator had been really invested in an off-white with brown trim colour scheme. But it had a bed, and a breakfast nook, and a very impressive shower. “Do you want to get cleaned up?” Phil asked when he noticed Clint eyeing the little tubes of body wash.

“Do you want me to stay?” Clint asked in return. Nat and Steve had taken his riding gear with them, but Clint had been planning on catching a taxi of Phil wanted some space.

“Yeah.”

Clint grinned. “Want to share a shower with me?”

Phil gave Clint a sly look as he tore open a packet of t-shirts. “Captain America told us to have a quiet night,” he said.

“I can be quiet,” Clint replied with a smirk, but he closed the bathroom door when Phil made no move to accompany him, and showered with quick thoroughness.

Clint was stretched out in bed by the time Phil finished his own shower, having stolen a pair of the new underpants Natasha had bought. Phil was dressed in a light blue t-shirt and thin sweat pants, and he looked so very worn out.

“Nope,” Clint said as Phil tried to wrap around him. “Of the two of us, you’ve had the shittiest night and that means that I am on big spoon duty.”

“You did get shot at,” Phil protested as Clint nudged him onto his side and cuddled up against Phil’s back.

“Your building went a little bit on fire.”

“You got beat up by Ms Eliana,” Phil countered, a smile in his voice.

“You had to drink shitty vet coffee,” Clint returned, before pressing a kiss to the back of Phil’s neck.

“Nothing that happened tonight was your fault,” Phil said, tangling his fingers with Clint’s. There was only the smallest hint of uncertainly in Phil’s voice, and Clint hugged him close, tucking his nose behind Phil’s ear.

“I know,” he replied. “I just really want to be the big spoon for once.”

Phil made a small noise of concession in the back of his throat, and between the physical crash after their experiences and the smell of clean hair and fresh sheets, they quickly drifted off. Clint waited until Phil was definitely asleep before mouthing “I love you, too” against the back of Phil’s shoulder.


End file.
